Too soon to take a Hydrometer reading?

ohill1981 · 12-10-2008, 07:58 PM

My beer is on it's 3rd day right now and i never took a hydrometer reading to get the BG. Yesterday my airlock bubbled all day and when i woke up today the bubbling had ceased. I was planning on letting this batch sit for a couple weeks more but i am curious what the Specific Gravity is currently.. Would it hurt for me to check this at this point ?

**DeathBrewer** · 12-10-2008, 07:59 PM

leave it alone. you want it to sit for at least a week before racking to secondary anyway and at least 3 weeks before going to bottle/keg. what's the point of taking a sample now?

**Revvy** · 12-10-2008, 08:01 PM

If it bubbled everything is fine, now leave it alone for at least another week, before checking gravity...or like many of us do leave it alone for at least 3 weeks more then bottle...

**cuinrearview** · 12-10-2008, 08:03 PM

If you're really that anxious to do something, get some stuff and do another batch. Let the yeast work and follow a schedule. Believe me, I know it's exciting. I'm sure that we can all remember our first few batches. I get that excited now over having an empty vessel to fill.

Deacon240 · 12-10-2008, 08:31 PM

Like the others said, let it sit for at least another week. Let the yeasties do their job. They do it well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cuinrearview

If you're really that anxious to do something, get some stuff and do another batch.

I did just that when I threw my first batch in, although I forgot to buy hops so I wasn't able to brew another batch yet

. Still need to get hops... I hate where I live because there are no LHBS

**Nurmey** · 12-10-2008, 11:22 PM

If you look at it now you will only freak out at how ugly it is. Those yeast parties are NOT attractive. If you look, you will be back on here certain that something is wrong then we will have to tell you that everything is fine.

Padstack31 · 12-10-2008, 11:48 PM

Since you missed taking you OG, wait until ferementation has completed. Take a FG gravity reading and multiply it by 4. That will get you about as close as you can to what your OG was so that you can determine you ABV. OG - FG *131 = ABV...all the best

**DeathBrewer** · 12-11-2008, 12:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Padstack31

Since you missed taking you OG, wait until ferementation has completed. Take a FG gravity reading and multiply it by 4. That will get you about as close as you can to what your OG was so that you can determine you ABV. OG - FG *131 = ABV...all the best

wth is this? i'm confused. to get your og, you just take your fg times 4? how does that make any sense?

if she wants her og, she should just post her recipe. we can figure it out.

Padstack31 · 12-11-2008, 12:16 AM

If you just use the recipe then you have to make an assumption about the efficency of his procedures. i just assumed he didn't know what his efficency is.

I read at some point and article stating that if you take a beer's OG, say 1.053 and divide the 53 points by 4, you will have a target for you FG. In this case 53/4 = 13. You are looking at a FG of 1.013 or 1.053-1.013*131 a 5.2% ABV...I've found this to be a fairly accurate rule of thumb when I'm working on my recipes, it's not always exact but it's better then nothing.

I just bottled my Holiday Ale and it started with an OG of 1.063, fermented for three weeks and stoped at 1.017, 63/4 = 16 so my target FG would have been 1.016 with this method but the beer stopped at 1.017,

I'm not saying we shouldn't use our programs to determine FG, I'm just saying that in the case you don't know the OG, this can be used to ball park the OG. Try it on your recipes and see if it holds true for you but I haven't come across one that was materially off in the few months I known about this.

Edit: Just re-read my first post and I didn't make it clear that you should only divide the gravity points by 4, my mistake...I didn't mean to divide the whole 1.053 by 4 just the the 53

Padstack31 · 12-11-2008, 12:29 AM

I found a vague reference to this calc on the BYO website...

http://byo.com/component/content/article/4/1712-brewing-calculator

Middle of the page under the section called Metric Madness, like I said, it's not the most accurate method but it's easy math that can be done on the fly. This isn't the article I was referencing above but I'm starting to believe it was in either BYO or Zymurgy...