Another brewing disaster.

Recently started my second brew (a european coopers lager, risky I know) after my first Ale turned out okay after a few weeks in the bottle.

Now, everything was going smoothly when I started the brew, all the wort was mixed, until I had to add the cold water. Like the utter idiot I am, part of the rubber lining on the spiggate had doubled over on itself, resulting in about 1/6th of my wort quenching the thirst of my back yard. This obviously reduced the SG (it was around 0.025). In a panic, I added enough sugars (malt and dex) to get it to 0.04.

It's been going for 4 days now, and the FG is slightly less than 0.001, which to me seems very strange. I had a taste and the wort still tastes very sweet. I was going to leave it in the fermenter for a few weeks anyway to mature. My main worry is that the small amount of precious malt extract donated to my patio has rendered my beer to taste like a watered down Calpol.

Any suggestions/comments on my home brew disaster are welcome.

Hi Grind. None of your numbers make sense. For example, your original gravity number of 0.04 is less than many beers end up at. Perhaps you meant 1.040 or perhaps you are reading the wrong side of your hydrometer?

Again, 0.001 doesn't make any sense. It could be 1.001 or 1.010, but if its less than 1.000, then its 0.99, 0.98, etc.

In case its an issue of reading your hydrometer, here are a couple of photos. The first shows a gravity reading of about 1.010



This one shows a gravity reading of about 1.020



Hope this helps!

Very nice examples...

What Pappers said. Also, if you're adding water to the wort to reach your volume (partial boil), it's pretty difficult to get an accurate gravity reading. You'd have to mix the wort and water extremely well.