Low Starting Gravity

I just brewed a Tongue Splitter Ale extract kit from Northern Brewer. I've brewed many times before so I'm not new at this by any means even though I'm no expert. Anyway, I got the wort cooled down to 70 degrees between using a wort chiller and adding back enough water to get it to 5 gallons after the boil. After putting it into the primary and adding the yeast I realized I forgot to take a gravity reading. When I took it I couldn't believe it read 1.014! I double and triple checked that I was reading it right and even took a 2nd sample after that and got the same thing.

I started out with just under 6 gallons of water before boiling and ended up having to add about a gallon to bring it up to 5 gallons again. I did leave more than usual the amount of trub in the bottom of the boil kettle but I just figured this was from all the hop additions. Could adding so much water dilute it that much???

I was really looking forward to this one now I'm kind of bummed. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Below is the recipe.

Specialty Grains


* 0.5 lbs. Dingemans Caramel Pils
* 0.5 lbs. Simpsons Caramalt

Fermentables


* 6 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup

Boil Additions


* .75 oz. Summit (60 min)
* 1 oz. Glacier (15 min)
* 1 oz. Cascade (10 min)
* 0.5 oz. Cascade (2 min)
* 0.5 oz. Liberty (2 min)

Special Ingredients


* 1/2 oz. Cascade Hops (dry hop)

Special Ingredients


* 1/2 oz. Liberty Hops (dry hop)



* Wyeast #1332 Northwest Ale Yeast. Optimum temperature: 65-75° F

I loaded the recipe into Beersmith and it has an estimated OG of 1.048. I've only ever done 1 extract batch and it was my first so I was pretty clueless. Just the pils extract should have given you 1.043 according to beersmith. If it was me I'd let it go a week check the gravity then bottle it. Every time I've screwed up brewing the beer has turned out fine.

Check the hydrometer in water. Maybe there is a problem with it.

Whoah ... no way you'd loose that much, especially with extract. I'm guessing on a hydrometer failure. Do you have another one to use? Does the beer smell normal? 1.014 starting gravity will barely smell sweet at all, I'd imagine.

It's a pretty common issue for ANYONE using extract and then topping off with water (and that includes partial mashes) to have an error in reading the OG...In fact, it is actually nearly impossible to mix the wort and the top off water in a way to get an accurate OG reading...

You more than likely with that low reading got more of the top off water than the wort, had it read some huge number over it would have been that you grabbed more of the extract than the top off water in your sample. Like i said it is pretty common.

When I am doing an extract with grain recipe I make sure to stir for a minimum of 5 minutes (whipping up a froth to aerate as well) before I draw a grav sample and pitch my yeast....It really is an effort to integrate the wort with the top off water...This is a fairly common new brewer issue we get on here...unless you under or over topped off or the final volume for the kit was 5 gallons and you topped off to 5.5, then the issue, sorry to say, is "operator error"

it doesn't matter what your reading was.....the "real reading" in an extract batch is what it said it would be in the recipe or beersmith....Whether or not you mixed it up enough before you took the reading it mixed itself up fine during fermentation.

So unless you had a final volume a gallon or so higher than 5 gallons....you recipe will be fine and at the OG it was supposed to be,

I bet your OG is EXACTLY what it is supposed to be.

And during fermentation the wort and water will mix up just fine on it's own.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. The more I thought about it the more I thought it'd almost be difficult to screw up a kit like this. I'll trust it and let it go. As I said I did add about a gallon of water to bring it up to 5 gallons and I did stir it up some to agitate/aerate it but maybe not enough. Time will tell.

Found out today that the hydrometer was out of whack. Seems it's just a rolled up paper inside the stem and it had slipped down quite a bit. Whew!

Yup, that exact same thing happened to a guy I know just recently. The little paper slipped down. Chuck that sucker and get a new one.