Stout SG went UP in primary overnight?!

I just brewed a stout recipe that I put together with some ingredients I was given for free. The grains were whole and sealed and the malt extract was in a sealed silver bag. All from a reputable HBS. They may be a couple of years old, but I figured I'd use them...worst case: bad beer. But something odd happened. I broke my hydrometer and used a back-up. It gave an OG of 1.047, less that anticipated. It should have been in the 1.085 range. That was yesterday. Today, I was anticipating adding some corn sugar to bump up the alcohol. I took and SG reading and it's 1.111!!! What?! I tasted a sample and it's very sweet, not much bitterness. This is a 2 gallon batch (2-1/2 gals in the fermenter). I wonder how this is going to ferment out, how sweet it will be and if it will need a long time in the bottle? It is currently picking up steam in the airlock bubble intervals...should be pretty vigorous by later today. Any thoughts out there? This is only my 3rd beer batch and I have made 4 batches of crabapple cider, so I'm still a newbie. Anyone else have a batch SG go UP in the primary overnight?

As far as I know the only way the SG goes up is if you lose water but keep sugar (aka boiling) my guess is that your test tube for your hydrometer wasn't full enough with beer and the hydrometer bottomed out before it could give an actual reading. Two test points will always give a line, three indicates a trend. Take another reading if you really want to know the OG and make sure your hydrometer is floating freely in your test tube.

Another idea is that when you took your initial reading, was the temp of your beer close to the calibration temp of your hydrometer? This will make a difference but probably not 64 points of a difference.

Assuming that your OG is in the 1.085 range and you pitched a healthy yeast and most of the malt in your bill is fermentable you should be fine and the sweetness will go away as yeast eats it. Any more volume and you would need a starter.

it didn't go up. what temp did you take the OG reading at?

atom said:

it didn't go up. what temp did you take the OG reading at?

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The room temp was 69F and the wort was about 73F. The hydrometer was freely floating in a good sample and not touching bottom. It is a hydrometer that was given to me and appears to be fine, but it was the first time I used it. But it is also the one I used today.

I'm betting that neither of your measurements are right. If you use extract and have the right amount of water, your gravity is going to be right on. There really is no way to be high or low. There is a fixed amount of sugar in the extract. If you put that into a fixed amount of water, you get the projected gravity.

So, just shut the lid and leave your beer alone for a couple weeks. It will be just fine.

I think you should continue opening the fermenter to check it after each day. That's a joke. Stop opening the fermenter to check it, especially after one day.

Yeah...I'm going to leave it alone and let it do its thing. The only reason I opened it today was because I was suspicious of the reading yesterday and wanted to double check. It's going to be whatever it's going to be. And I'll bottle it and start tasting a bottle a month until it's gone...we'll see how good or bad it gets!

Ok. drop the hydrometer in a full tube of water. Does it read 1.000? If it doesn't the hydrometer is wrong. If it does then I'm out of ideas. Either way, if its fermenting now, then listen to ericbw, just leave it alone.

When using extract it takes a lot of mixing to get all the sugars equalled out in solution. Your initial reading was probably low due to insufficient mixing prior to pulling a sample for the reading.

BrewinHooligan said:

When using extract it takes a lot of mixing to get all the sugars equalled out in solution. Your initial reading was probably low due to insufficient mixing prior to pulling a sample for the reading.

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yup this is your answer. the sugar just wasn't evenly mixed when you took your measurements.

BrewinHooligan said:

When using extract it takes a lot of mixing to get all the sugars equalled out in solution. Your initial reading was probably low due to insufficient mixing prior to pulling a sample for the reading.

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+1. I'm fairly certain this is your answer. And as billl said, if you followed the recipe and got the right volume, then your OG is going to be right around what the recipe said.

Hmmm...I thought I had agitated the crap out of it for 2 minutes before I checked it. But that might explain why the sample flavors were so different. Maybe the sweetness will drop and the bitterness will come back between fermentation and bottle conditioning. Thanks folks! And WissaBrewGuy: brilliant. Sometimes the most simple, obvious steps are totally overlooked! Check the baseline...duh! Thanks! I checked it and, compensating for the water temp, it looks right.

mattmmille said:

WissaBrewGuy: brilliant. Sometimes the most simple, obvious steps are totally overlooked! Check the baseline...duh! Thanks! I checked it and, compensating for the water temp, it looks right.

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I'm glad it works! Always good to do a sanity check. It must have been the mixing issue. I don't do a lot of extract so I didn't really know this could be an issue. Good luck and cheers to good beer!