I forgot to take an original gravity reading

I forgot to take an original gravity reading, so after about 2 days I took a reading. How much does the specific gravity change after 48 hours? (approximately of course, and my airlock was bubbling pretty hardcore.) Thanks!
Oh and after about 8 days there was a change of.025 dunno if that helps with the calculation...

That's a really hard question to answer. It depends on your recipe, your yeast, and your temperature. Often a beer will be pretty much finished fermenting after two days. If your brew was an extract version, you can predict your OG fairly accurately. If it was AG or partial mash, we may never know.

Ahh, well I figured it was a long shot. It was an extract kit that I augmented with a couple lbs of grain. I feel really stupid because part of my experiment was to see how much alc/vol would be added to the beer if I used an extra 2 lbs of grain. Anyway, there is always next time!

You can calculate what it should have been, but without knowing your mash efficiency it would just be a guess.

well...what was the recipe and what was the type of grain with the added 2 lbs?

FabilaJ said:

part of my experiment was to see how much alc/vol would be added to the beer if I used an extra 2 lbs of grain

Click to expand...

So just use some brewing software - you can answer that question in a matter of minutes.

Assuming you are merely STEEPING grains, and not doing a mini mash, you are not likely to be affecting your ABV significantly (or at all) however - generally steeping grains are for adding character (body, mouthfeel, color, flavor), not fermentables, as a basic steep won't convert starches. If you want to tweak the ABV you should either tweak the extract amounts, or look into partial mashing.

Agreed, if you steeped the grains the impact on your abv would have been very little.

RDWHAHB and make sure to take a gravity reading next time. Live and learn.