Hydrometer Question

So, I'm fairly new (just brewed my 4th batch this weekend), and I have some questions about my hydrometer. On my first few batches, I felt like it was giving me kind of low numbers, but I didn't think much of it.

This weekend, I brewed a very strong imperial pale ale. The kit says the OG should be around 1.080, and I even added some additional fermentables on top of that. Had a fairly uneventful brewday, topped it off to 5 gallons, "rocked the baby" thoroughly, and I got an OG reading of 1.064.

I tried the hydrometer against pure water and got the standard 1.000 reading. Any idea what's going on?

This is a popular question today. Let's see if I can beat Revvy to the standard response...

Check this out, and RDWHAHB:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/at...inal-gravity-reading-wrong-dont-panic-289735/

Wow, glad to know I'm not alone, lol.

So, is there any way to get an accurate OG reading on an extract batch? Or should I just put the ingredients into Beersmith and go with whatever estimate comes up?

If you're doing extract, you really don't need to worry about it too much. Whatever BeerSmith predicts should be accurate as long as you added the right amount of extract and your final batch size is correct.

FG is more important for extract brewing, as it tells you when fermentation is complete. And fermentation naturally mixes everything, so there shouldn't be any issues with your FG reading.