Adding water and OG

So, in the past when I've made a 5 gal. batch from a kit, I would follow the directions, do a partial boil, and add water in the end to bring it up to 5 gal.

Then I bought a refractometer.
So now when I'm adding my water, I bring it up to the target OG, not the target volume.
I assume it's better for my fermenting and abv calculations.

Now I've had the same thing happen in my first two brews using this idea. Both times I've added water to bring it up to the OG, but it's closer to 4 gal. than 5 gal.

Is this normal? Is this okay? Is this fixable?

That seems like something is wrong. It sounds like you're missing your OG a lot, but is this an extract kit? If so, that shouldn't happen. Are you mixing the wort properly before taking the reading?

If you follow the directions and finish at the target volume with an extract kit you should have the correct OG. I have added slightly more water on top up and still hit the OG as near as I can read it on my hydrometer scale. Do you have a refractometer that corrects automatically for temperature? If not you are getting inaccurate readings.

My theory as to why this is happening is that perhaps I'm not getting enough LME out of the canister. Would this explain the difference?

eh2010 said:

My theory as to why this is happening is that perhaps I'm not getting enough LME out of the canister. Would this explain the difference?

Click to expand...

Maybe if you were leaving LME behind. You can add some hot water to the can/jug and shake it up and pour it into your pot when you add the LME, to make sure you get it all out.

Can you check your reading next time? Take an OG reading with your hydrometer and one with your refractometer to make sure they match. My refractometer had to be "calibrated" and adjusted with a 1.0033 correction factor. Now it's dead on!