First batch question

Hey all. Brewed my first batch last night. Used a basic pale ale recipe:

3 lbs coops light dme
3 lbs muntons amber dme

1.5 oz cascade boiling
.5 oz cascade finishing

Safale us-05 dried ale yeast

Everything went well, however og was 1.032. Pitched yeast and checked it this morning, airlock was bubbling every 1-2 seconds and about an inch of krausen.

I'm a little concerned about the low og. As this is my first brew should I just let it be or should I do something in order to to increase the specific gravity (ie add dme)?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Ps also strained into carboy and had a lot of leftover crud. This normal?

Fairly new myself. welcome. What volume of water did you start with and what was the volume when you took the OG reading? Remember, temperature of wort will affect your reading also.Suggest you let it go and see how it progresses.

Boiled extract w 2 gallons of water added to carboy w 2 gallons of cold water and then added more water up to 5 g. Possible wort was still a little warm when I took my reading

What did the recipe say OG should have been? More likely than not you reached the correct gravity but the sample you took after adding the water was just not mixed well enough. Unlike all grain where efficiencies come into play, extract is pretty straight forward as long as volumes are correct in the end.

The first beer I ever made from an extract kit OG was at 1.080 instead of 1.060 as the recipe stated which is pretty much impossible as long as volumes were correct. My sample I learned later just had more of the extract. So it can work both ways.

thedevanzoshift said:

I'm a little concerned about the low og. As this is my first brew should I just let it be or should I do something in order to to increase the specific gravity (ie add dme)?

Click to expand...

I say leave it.

thedevanzoshift said:

Ps also strained into carboy and had a lot of leftover crud. This normal?

Click to expand...

That would be the hops. Yes, normal.

Thanks for the quick and helpful replies. I now assume the low og was due to a water heavy sample as I just lifted up the carboy and poured it into a glass to do my test

Dan probably nailed it. I've done the same thing with extract batches. You really can't miss your gravity by all that much with extract unless something went terribly wrong (added an extra gallon of water by accident, or spilled extract all over the floor)