Gravity

Just brewed our first Belgian Dubbel tonight. The original gravity should read 1.064, however our beer is showing 1.032. Seems a little off to me...

I'm doing a gravity reading right after we cool the beer and put it into a carboy, before we add the yeast. Is this the correct time to take a sample for the gravity?

TheCrowsNest said:

Just brewed our first Belgian Dubbel tonight. The original gravity should read 1.064, however our beer is showing 1.032. Seems a little off to me...

I'm doing a gravity reading right after we cool the beer and put it into a carboy, before we add the yeast. Is this the correct time to take a sample for the gravity?

Click to expand...

It's the right time.

Let me speculate here:
1) It's an extract brew (given this forum);
2) You did a partial boil, and topped it off with water.

If that's the case, don't worry. The top-off water isn't mixed in completely with the wort, so you pulled a dilute mix from the top. It'll mix up well during fermentation.

If you brew with extract and add all the ingredients, you'll basically hit your OG every time. It's not even worth taking a hydro reading of OG except as a sanity check on whether you forgot to add something.

1. Yes
2. Yes

So we might as well bypass the initial hydro reading and just take a final, then subtract that from the recipes OG? How can we mix wort and water to give a more accurate reading if we're not going off a recipe?

Add some water, then some wort, then some water, then some wort, then top with the rest of the water.

Shake, shake, shake the fermenter.