first brew and made a big mistake

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dannewbrewman

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So I am brewing my first beer and i meant to check my fg before transferring to my bottling bucket but got caught up in the excitement and so i transferred my beer to the bottling bucket and added priming sugar and checked my fg and got a reading of 1.020 when i expected a 1.010 to 1.012. Do you have any idea if this beer is saveable?
 
I am using a True Brew start up kit and True Brew Irish Stout ingredient kit. my bg was 1.046 and the beer sat in the primary for one week.
 
I leave all my beers in primary for 4 weeks. 1 week sounds way too early and they beer may not have been done fermenting.
 
Yeah thats what I am thinking with the reading i got from the hydrometer but now that I added the priming sugars, did I just ruin it or is it possible to just cap it in the bottling bucket with the air lock cap from the primary, or transfer it back to the primary after cleaning it out.
 
So you took your reading after adding priming sugar and adding to bottling bucket and it came out to 1.020? Most "kit" beers typically stall out at 1.020, if you search "1.020" on this forum, you will see many threads with the same thing. If you continue to use the true brew kits, make sure to use a yeast nutrient, oxygenate heavily prior to pitching, and pitch the proper amount of yeast. This will help getting you close to the suggested FG. You're beer will taste fine, if not great, and I'm 99% sure you won't have to worry about bottle bombs!

Hope this helps!
 
I'm sort of drunk so don't hold me to this but I think your priming sugar likely added about 3 points. So I'm thinking your final gravity is likely around 1.017 or 1.018.

So either you didn't let it go long enough (1 week is a wee short) or you have more unfermentable sugar than you want. If its unfermentable sugar it will just more of a sweet stout. If it just didn't have enough time in the primary you may have some explosive bottles or a highly carbonated beverage.
 
I took the reading straight from the primary but I had already started mixing it with the sugar. so it went like this, I stared siphoning into the bottling bucket, added sugar water to bottling bucket, pulled the siphon house up and let beer coming strairt from primary flow into hydrometer tube and then let it continue to flow into bottling bucket.
 
Meh... If it were me, I would bottle, and learn from it, patience is number one in brewing! You could let the priming sugar ferment out, wait another week, then add more priming sugar and bottle. However, the difference in CO2 pressure having it end at 1.020 vs. 1.018 or so isn't that much in a bottle enviroment.
 
ok, Thanks Deuce I guess i will be bottling away tonight and hoping I dont make bombs, and next time will be a little smarter, and may do a mixture of things, such as letting it stay in the primary longer, chicking fg first, and maybe not getting one of those kits.
 

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