1.000 hydrometer reading??

Hey, im just about to go into secondary fermentation with a coopers beer and my hydrometer readings for the last 24hours have been 1.000.

Is there something wrong as per my instruction book it should be between 1.006 and 1.012.

Probably being over paranoid again

What reading does your hydrometer give when you test it using water ?

Your beer is totally screwed. Anything below 1.006 becomes toxic. Send it to me for proper disposal.

Seriously though it should be fine. Was your starting gravity where you wanted it? Take another reading, 1.000 seems pretty difficult to do with a beer. Ciders and whatnot that use corn sugar can get pretty low. Assuming somehow your beer did get down that low, which I'm not sure it really did... well it will be a bit drier than you might like. However go ahead and bottle it anyway. Odds are it was just an incorrect reading.

Did you add a lot of sugar? Post your recipe and OG and we'll give a shot at trouble shooting your issue.

Diablo said:

What reading does your hydrometer give when you test it using water ?

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With water it comes in at 0.800.....is that right?

cvstrat: u scared the beejaysus outa me, dont do that agin

I was using a Coopers home brew with 1KG of sugar added in.

This is a link to the kit: Coopers Europen Lager 1.7Kg - €11.99 : The Homebrew Company, One Stop Homebrew Shop

Its been in primary for about 10 days. I was just about to bottle 4 and put the rest into secondary.

No... it should read 1.000 in water at STP (standard temperature and pressure).

arcto said:

With water it comes in at 0.800.....is that right?

cvstrat: u scared the beejaysus outa me, dont do that agin

Click to expand...

No it should be 1.000 in water, assuming the water is at the temp the hydrometer is calibrated at. It should be printed on the hydrometer. I think mine is 16 celsius.

Make sure you are adjusting for temperature as well.
Using Hydrometers - John Palmer

arcto said:

With water it comes in at 0.800.....is that right?

cvstrat: u scared the beejaysus outa me, dont do that agin

Click to expand...

Hydrometers don't even go below .990. So, maybe your hydrometer is .998?

This is a simplified view, it doesn't show the "lines" that mark each reading. But this is a good example in how they look. You can see at the top that the lowest it can ever read is .990.



This is a picture from the gallery (thanks, Conroe!) showing a typical reading of the original gravity. You can see where 1.000 is.

Ooops, sorry i made a mistake with the water reading. Its one notch above 1.000 (toward the sky).

my og was 1.035


Just took another beer reading and its pretty much bang on the 1.000 mark.
Could it be my hydrometer?

what is the water temp when your doing the reading?

Water temp is 21.5C

And what temp is your hydrometer calibrated at? Temperature changes the reading but can be adjusted.

Theres nothing on the hydrometer except the reading gage, or its packageing and case. Maybe i should email the company i bought it from and ask them what its rated at?

arcto said:

Ooops, sorry i made a mistake with the water reading. Its one notch above 1.000 (toward the sky).

my og was 1.035


Just took another beer reading and its pretty much bang on the 1.000 mark.
Could it be my hydrometer?

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If your water is "one notch above 1.000", that sounds like your water is .998 (each mark is 2 points, just like a thermometer). Most hydrometers are calibrated at 60 degrees (and even if it is calibrated at 68 degrees, as some are, it wouldn't change the reading much), so that means that your water reading would actually be .999. .999 is close enough to 1.000 to consider the reading valid, and the hydrometer accurate.

I assume your beer had a KG of corn sugar in it, that's why it fermented so low. Corn sugar is very fermentable, and many kits "cheaper" kits use it to boost ABV without adding giving you extra malt.

In any case, your beer is finished. You can bottle when you'd like. Most people recommend bottling after a minimum of 2-3 weeks because if you bottle clearer beer, you'll get less sediment in the bottle, plus the yeast then have a bit of time to condition the beer some. After fermentation is finished, the yeast actually still work- they even begin digesting their own waste products when there are no more fermentable sugars. So, the end result is a better beer.

Thanks alot guys. I just bottled 4 330ml ones (im picking up my pint bottles tomorow) and put the rest into a secondary fermentation tank. Would it be worth my while leaving it in the second tank for 7-10 days or will i bottle tomorow?

Thanks again, id be lost without this board. Hopefully some day when im more experienced i can return the favour.

Hate to dig this baby up and I apologize for the necromancing, but I brewed a panela, um, beer, and it finished below 1.000. Sorry I didnt snap a pic but it seems to be about 6 points below 1.000; looked like it said 0.940? With an OG of 1.060 that gives me 15.75%. Am I reading this right? Interestingly, at 1.000 it would have had an ABV of 8.0%. Seems unreal to me that .060 points would yield 8% while an additional 6 points would double that. Help?

Edit: the brain fart seems to have cleared, I now see that it dropped to 0.994 giving a far more realistic 8.66%. Its a good thing my career involves very little math because I may be mildly impaired.

Don't you love it when the lack of a plan comes together?

grampamark said:

Don't you love it when the lack of a plan comes together?

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No, sorry, but I do love when the plan of my lack comes to torment me.
Edit: Mental deficiency is its own reward

Jayjay1976 said:

Mental deficiency is its own reward

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That's what the voices in my head say.