Too soon to take a Hydrometer reading?

My beer is on it's 3rd day right now and i never took a hydrometer reading to get the BG. Yesterday my airlock bubbled all day and when i woke up today the bubbling had ceased. I was planning on letting this batch sit for a couple weeks more but i am curious what the Specific Gravity is currently.. Would it hurt for me to check this at this point ?

leave it alone. you want it to sit for at least a week before racking to secondary anyway and at least 3 weeks before going to bottle/keg. what's the point of taking a sample now?

If it bubbled everything is fine, now leave it alone for at least another week, before checking gravity...or like many of us do leave it alone for at least 3 weeks more then bottle...

If you're really that anxious to do something, get some stuff and do another batch. Let the yeast work and follow a schedule. Believe me, I know it's exciting. I'm sure that we can all remember our first few batches. I get that excited now over having an empty vessel to fill.

Like the others said, let it sit for at least another week. Let the yeasties do their job. They do it well.

cuinrearview said:

If you're really that anxious to do something, get some stuff and do another batch.

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I did just that when I threw my first batch in, although I forgot to buy hops so I wasn't able to brew another batch yet . Still need to get hops... I hate where I live because there are no LHBS

If you look at it now you will only freak out at how ugly it is. Those yeast parties are NOT attractive. If you look, you will be back on here certain that something is wrong then we will have to tell you that everything is fine.

Since you missed taking you OG, wait until ferementation has completed. Take a FG gravity reading and multiply it by 4. That will get you about as close as you can to what your OG was so that you can determine you ABV. OG - FG *131 = ABV...all the best

Padstack31 said:

Since you missed taking you OG, wait until ferementation has completed. Take a FG gravity reading and multiply it by 4. That will get you about as close as you can to what your OG was so that you can determine you ABV. OG - FG *131 = ABV...all the best

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wth is this? i'm confused. to get your og, you just take your fg times 4? how does that make any sense?

if she wants her og, she should just post her recipe. we can figure it out.

If you just use the recipe then you have to make an assumption about the efficency of his procedures. i just assumed he didn't know what his efficency is.

I read at some point and article stating that if you take a beer's OG, say 1.053 and divide the 53 points by 4, you will have a target for you FG. In this case 53/4 = 13. You are looking at a FG of 1.013 or 1.053-1.013*131 a 5.2% ABV...I've found this to be a fairly accurate rule of thumb when I'm working on my recipes, it's not always exact but it's better then nothing.

I just bottled my Holiday Ale and it started with an OG of 1.063, fermented for three weeks and stoped at 1.017, 63/4 = 16 so my target FG would have been 1.016 with this method but the beer stopped at 1.017,

I'm not saying we shouldn't use our programs to determine FG, I'm just saying that in the case you don't know the OG, this can be used to ball park the OG. Try it on your recipes and see if it holds true for you but I haven't come across one that was materially off in the few months I known about this.

Edit: Just re-read my first post and I didn't make it clear that you should only divide the gravity points by 4, my mistake...I didn't mean to divide the whole 1.053 by 4 just the the 53

I found a vague reference to this calc on the BYO website...

http://byo.com/component/content/article/4/1712-brewing-calculator

Middle of the page under the section called Metric Madness, like I said, it's not the most accurate method but it's easy math that can be done on the fly. This isn't the article I was referencing above but I'm starting to believe it was in either BYO or Zymurgy...

looks to me like she is brewing with extract. using the recipe would be much closer.

if you just use the FG, you are dealing with attenuation and which yeast is used, how far it went, what type of extract was used, what (if any) sugars came from the grain, etc.

seems using the recipe would be MUCH more accurate from extract. i would never try to calculate OG for a PM or AG recipe...there are just too many variables including mash temp, yeast range, etc. i'd just wait until i was sure it was finished before bottling or do it to taste for kegging.

what if you wind up with a fg of 1.020 and it doesn't move for a few days but it tastes ok? should i just assume my og was 1.080? there would be no way to tell when your beer is done if you don't know the OG and that, in turn, means that you cannot calculate the OG from the FG.

the metric madness calculator seems to deal with attenuation and estimated OG based on your system and what grains you have, not calculating OG based on FG. it doesn't mention FG at all.

sorry, just sounds like an unreliable way to do it to me (and again, an extract recipe would do the trick)

I wait at least a week before I check gravity and 4/5 of my batches did not have any visual air signs of fermentation. 2 of the batches had blowoff tube and they did not have any bubbles. 2 other batches with airlock had 0 activity in the airlock but this was a 9 gallon primary doing 5 gallon batch so there was a lot of headspace full of co2.

I can smell the fermentation and in my Coopers buckets I can see the krausen so I know its working. My Brass Ballz had massive krausen in less then 12 hours and I trust my yeasties!

Yeasties for President 2012!

DeathBrewer said:

looks to me like she is brewing with extract. using the recipe would be much closer.

if you just use the FG, you are dealing with attenuation and which yeast is used, how far it went, what type of extract was used, what (if any) sugars came from the grain, etc.

seems using the recipe would be MUCH more accurate from extract. i would never try to calculate OG for a PM or AG recipe...there are just too many variables including mash temp, yeast range, etc. i'd just wait until i was sure it was finished before bottling or do it to taste for kegging.

what if you wind up with a fg of 1.020 and it doesn't move for a few days but it tastes ok? should i just assume my og was 1.080? there would be no way to tell when your beer is done if you don't know the OG and that, in turn, means that you cannot calculate the OG from the FG.

the metric madness calculator seems to deal with attenuation and estimated OG based on your system and what grains you have, not calculating OG based on FG. it doesn't mention FG at all.

sorry, just sounds like an unreliable way to do it to me (and again, an extract recipe would do the trick)

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Alot of what you say make sense but some of the things you mention would be reasons why the recipe OG would be different from the actual OG... Things like what type of extract was used, what (if any) sugars came from the grain, etc. would all affect the OG but not what happens during the ferementation. The point you made about the yeast attenuation would have an impact and I'm guessing that is one of the reasons why this isn't the most accurate method but it also doesn't appear to be significant enough to make a major impact.

The issue with that guys beer with an OG of 1.053 and a stuck fermentation at 1.02 just seems weird to me and I don't have confidence in his readings. 1.02 is a bit high FG wouldn't you agree? Hell, he even thinks it weird which is why is asking in the first place.

From my own recipies and actual fermentations, I have found this formula to be in the ball park. If I start coming across recipes that this doesn't work for then I'll probably lose confidence in it, but for now, it's been pretty accurate everytime I've applied it.

Look at your own recipes, does it work to them? How about your fermentation records? Again, I'm not saying that it's the best method for these calculations. I just am saying that it seems to be materially accurate and can be used for rough calculations. Plus it's easy to apply on the fly in your head. The moment you have your OG, you can quickly determine FG and abv, all in you head. That is what it's useful for, it's not a replacement for the actual calculation but I've found it to be a useful shortcut.

FG = ((OG-1)/4)+1 is the same as

OG = ((FG-1)*4)+1

If you want to discuss further, send me a PM so that we don't completely hyjack this thread. I'd really like to see actual examples of this not working because like yourself, I was a bit skeptical at first but it's been working in my own real life examples, so I've been using it to ball park calculations when I don't have a calculator or my brewing software handy.

PM sent. 2, actually, my explanation was too long