Specific Gravity..??

So I just brewed my first batch ever on Monday, and its ferementing away as we speak. Everything seems to have gone well, but the only problem (maybe not a problem, I'm not sure) was the OG reading. It was 1.03, which I believe it pretty low for an og reading.

Now I know there is nothing I can do at this point, but for future reference, what might have cause such a low number? Is there something specific that I can do to make sure that number isn't so low next time? Will it effect the taste of my beer at all?

Thanks for the help!

The recipe would help. 1.030 is pretty light but the recipe may have been designed that way.....

Jason

It highly depends on your recipe and what size of a batch this was. For anyone to give any insight we have to know what ingredients you used to make the wort. Otherwise, we can't really tell if you had any errors or if it was just a low gravity beer!

I used the True Brew Amber All malt kit. The ingredients are listed as follows:

Hopped Amber Malt Extract – 1 can (6.6 lbs)
Light Dried Malt Extract – 2 lbs
Hop Pellets – 1 oz
Ale Yeast – 1 pack
Priming Sugar - 5 oz

The recipe with the kit calls for the og to be 1.042-1.044, so I know I must have done something wrong. I just don't know what lol, since I'm a total noob and I'm not sure what effects the specific gravity.

If you ended up with the volume of wort specified in the recipe, you didn't do anything wrong. extract will get you the right OG.

it is highly likely that your top-off water was not mixed with your boiled wort when you took the gravity reading.

Its possible that your wort was not mixxed up with your top off water as well as you thought its pretty common and unless you#1 did not get all your extract out of your can or have overshot the volume in the fermenter i wouldnt really worry about it yet its kinda hard to mess up your gravity on a extract kit

Right as I hit reply, PVH's post comes through saying the same thing I was going to say! As long as you topped off to 5 gallons, it's pretty safe to assume you actually have an OG of 1.04 with extract. It's very hard to thuroughly mix the extract in the wort....but all the yeasties will find the fermentables in the whole batch.

Maybe thats the case. The directions told me to only stir the wort with the top off water once or twice, so I didn't want to over stir it. Hopefully it all works out!

I just did my first brew, I took a sample of OG and it came out to something like 1.012, then I shook it a bit and got 1.033. I am pretty positive if I gave it a proper shake and stir it would have gone up even more. I wouldn't worry.

Take a gravity reading now. If its still around 1.030, it probably fermented out a little bit. Then you could assume you hit an O.G. of 1.042 and get a ballpark idea of your final ABV%.