Significantly lower OG?

Hey Guys, This is my first home brew attempt. I'm trying to brew an IPA. I followed the recipe here:

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator?group=2&item=8468

It says the OG should come in at 1.056 but mine was 1.042. How concerned should I be about this? Also, is there anything I should be doing to help prevent this in the future? This just seems like a pretty big discrepancy. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

If you're doing extract and you follow the recipe, it's almost impossible to have a gravity different than expected.

That said, making thick concentrated wort mix with top off water is exceedingly difficult.

When you took your gravity reading you got wort from a strata that was less dense than the average. Relax, don't worry about it, and drink some beer for a few weeks while you wait for it to finish fermenting.

The yeast will be sure to churn everything up nicely for you, so it'll all be taken care of.

Another note, I've always read that it's a pretty bad idea to squeeze the grain bag because you can introduce tannins and whatnot into the beer. Personally, I'd skip that step.

DirtyMcCurdy said:

Another note, I've always read that it's a pretty bad idea to squeeze the grain bag because you can introduce tannins and whatnot into the beer. Personally, I'd skip that step.

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Thanks for the info! Luckily, a buddy of mine warned me about the same thing so I avoided this step. Just bottled it today so now I just have to wait!

Please tell me the "msu" in msuadamc stands for Michigan State University. I graduated from there in 2001.

whatisitgoodfor said:

If you're doing extract and you follow the recipe, it's almost impossible to have a gravity different than expected.

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Make sure you pay attention to your volumes. I was missing my extract numbers and finally realized I boiled off more/less than expected and the volume was throwing off my numbers.

Did you do a full boil or add top-off water.

If you add top off water and do not stir you will get a lower gravity on top where you are most likely taking the sample. As other's have said. It's hard to miss gravities in extract batches.