Omfg Og Wtf!?

Fun with abbreviations..

Anyways, I brewed a bitter today, following this recipe, except instead of the 4.5 lbs. English light DME, I used 6 lbs. light LME. I took my hydrometer reading and it read 1.060. I thought something was screwy, so I took another in a different vessel, 1.060. Is that possible with that one little switch:

Palace Bitter (5 gal)

4.5 lbs English light DME (I used 6 lbs. LME)
12 oz crystal malt
1/2 oz English Fuggles (60 min)
3/4 oz Kent Goldings (60 min)
1/4 oz English Fuggles (30 min)
1/4 oz Kent Goldings (30 min)
1/2 oz Kent Goldings (15 min)
1/2 oz Kent Goldings (2 min)

English-style ale yeast

3/4 cup corn sugar (to prime)

OG 1.040 - 1.044
FG 1.008 - 1.012
IBU 26
Color 13 SRM

Based on the extra 1.5 lbs of DME, looks like you hit it pretty close! Treat it with care, it will be delicious!

Skol!

When I input 6 pounds of Light LME into Promash for a 5 gallon batch it returns an SG of 1.044. Have you checked your hrdrometer for acuracy lately?

It's the hydrometer that came with my original kit. I haven't checked it for accuracy, and am not sure how to do it. I'm going to guess it has something to do with taking a reading of water?

Read with your brewing water supply
and check to see the temp. for your Hydrometer.
water is an odd chemical above or below 40 degrees it expands,

6 lbs of liquid malt extract is not the same as 6 lbs of dry malt extract. My guess is that your hydrometer is correct.

It's probably calibrated for 60F - that's pretty much the standard. Place it in 60F water and it should read exactly 1. Make sure you adjust all readings taken when the liquid being tested is above or below 60F.

60 is a bit high for a bitter if you're looking to stay true to style. If you're just looking to drink something that tastes good then I'm sure you'll be satisfied.

Tested the water and it's a perfect 1.00000000

Not too worried. I was hoping for a nice session beer, I guess I'll have to drink it with a little more caution. It's a fine line between session and binge. :fro:

The other possibility, although unlikely because it sounds like you took two samples, is that the wort wasn't properly stirred before the reading. I had the opposite problem a couple brews ago, an OG that came in quite a bit lower than expected. Didn't know at the time that I needed to gently stir the wort, as the sugars tend to sink. Still doesn't make sense unless you were taking the sample from the bottom of the kettle (do you have a spigot, perhaps?), but if you did that could explain the high reading.

Checklist of possible problems:

Are you sure that the reading you took was with the full 5 gallons of wort (not a more concentrated wort before "topping off")?

Was the wort well-stirred before taking the reading?

It can't be temperarture compensation, because taking readings at a higher temp than 60 leads to lower redaings, not higher.

It was the full five gallons out of the primary and I stirred it up really well with the beer/wine thief tube I have before taking the reading.

I did notice, there seemed to be a lot of particulate at the bottom of the test tube.

I brewed another bitter today and used 6 lbs. of the exact same LME. I got a reading of 1.054. Strange.

One quick observation...
original recipe called for 4.5 lbs DME, which would correlate to roughly 5.6 lbs LME (I usually use a LMEME ratio of 1.25). Plus, you state you used 6 lbs of LME, which I suspect you might mean 6.6 lbs if you used the cans of extract which are 3.3 lbs each (although if you had your LME poured from bulk you could have 6 lbs). So that puts my estimation around 1.053.
So it could be temp correction, sample error of concentrated wort... I'd say just relax, don't worry, have a homebrew. It'll turn out fine!

Marc.