changing OG readings in 30 min

Yesterday during my 2nd AG brew day (Ed's Haus Pale Ale)

Shook my carboy up real good and turkey basted out a sample, I measured my OG and read 1.037, I was sad but pitched my yeast anyhow.

There was a bit of bubbles and foam and maybe some break in my test tube.
I was having trouble reading it due to the foam so I let it sit. And my asst brewer, Timberwolf, and I sat there drinking my previous batch (wiezenbock) and asking where did we mess up. We hit the strike mash and sparge temps and times and had the planned amount of boil off and thought it was a great brew day. So we drank and talked and drank and talked and I looked at the tube again and it changed?

So ten minutes had passed and the OG had increased up to 1.038 then 1.040 and so on every few minutes till it got up to 1.052 and held. :rockin:

He took pictures with his camera and will email them to me and I will post today.

I did notice a bit of sediment in the bottom of the test jar. Can some one please comment on this....

What was the temperature of your sample? As the sample cooled the OG would increase, but that is an awful large increase based on temperature alone. There is also the possibility of some air bubbles keeping the hydrometer suspended higher than it should be. When the bubbles dissipated the reading corrected itself.

The bubbles from shaking were in your tube. As they dispersed, the reading corrected itself.

it was at 73deg and ended at 70 deg.

BrewWare: If the bubbles were holding it up I would have had an artificially higher gravity reading.

Below are pictures of my readings and hydrometer test jar, not the best shots but its what i have. I went from 1.036ish to 1.050ish in 30 minutes.