help my hydrometer reading

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pNut

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not very good with numbers and need help making sense of my hydrometer reading please. My reading ses 1.020.
 
well not sure what you are asking that could be a finish gravity of a big beer, what did your Hydrometer say when you started
 
This is the first reading I have done, and my first time brewing. Yes I'm testing gravity and my beer has been fermenting for 10 days.
 
Your gravity reading doesn't do you much good if you don't take a starting gravity reading. It's possible to get a decent estimate of the starting gravity if you know your volume rather precisely and you know how much extract you used, but you should take a gravity reading before pitching the yeast. If you did all-grain (probably not, since it was your first beer), then there's no telling what your original ravity was.
 
You have to take a specific gravity reading before pitching ur yeast ( this is OG, original gravity) for beer it will be around 1.040 and then take one at the end of your fermentation and this will be around 1.005 (FG, final gravity) for a lager type beer but for a full bodied beer these values are different, to work out the ABV you do this calculation:
(OG-FG)/7.46 +0.5= ABV
Example
(1040-1005)/7.46 +0.5= 5.2%
 
Ok bit lost now is it safe for me to bottle or should i wait a couple of days and then do another reading? Im using the youngs bitter 1.5kg beer kit.
 
Brilliant thank you. Where is a good ace for me to get info on the process as i feel uneducated in this arena?
 
An OG of 1.040 and FG of 1.005 is only common if you're brewing something like a Budweiser clone. I'd say most beer styles (including the different lager styles) are 1.045-1.055 for OG and 1.010-1.015 FG.
 
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