Refractometer reading 4 Brix on 3 week old wort

I tried both a completed bottled beer and 3 week old wort.

They are both reading about 4 Brix.

Can someone tell me what this means?

The original reading was at at 1040.

Thanks!

(oh I also wanted to mention that I do not like weed. It gives me anxiety, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath. It gives me panic attacks and makes me anxious. Just thought I would mention that)

If original was 1.040 or 10 brix and final is 4 brix with correction that would put your final gravity at 1.001. If I were you I would check with a hydrometer.

Refractometers are not an accurate measurment tool for final gravity, I am not even sure how much I trust the correction. Alchohol gets in the way of proper readings and FG should be done with a hydrometer.

My Refractometer is only used for preboil readings.

The only benefit to a refractometer after fermentation, that I know of, is using it in conjunction with a hydrometer reading to determine the approximate original gravity if you forgot to take an initial reading.

You can use a refractometer to obtain FG only if you know the OG of the wort. Here's a resource that does the calculations for you.

http://onebeer.net/refractometer.shtml

More Beer has a handy spreadsheet too...http://morebeer.com/learn_vids/vids_refract

I like that calculator on onebeer.net, but I thought you had to find your correction factor for your particular refractometer/hyrdrometer combo. Do they just use a generic one? I'm gonna go look at the source formula.

IrregularPulse said:

I like that calculator on onebeer.net, but I thought you had to find your correction factor for your particular refractometer/hyrdrometer combo. Do they just use a generic one? I'm gonna go look at the source formula.

Click to expand...

You are thinking of a different process in which you get the OG and FG of a beer where you know the ABV. Useful for commercial beers.

The above process does not involve a hydrometer at all.

TheCookieMonster said:

(oh I also wanted to mention that I do not like weed. It gives me anxiety, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath. It gives me panic attacks and makes me anxious. Just thought I would mention that)

Click to expand...

I'll keep that in mind...

dkershner said:

You are thinking of a different process in which you get the OG and FG of a beer where you know the ABV. Useful for commercial beers.

The above process does not involve a hydrometer at all.

Click to expand...

No, it was definitely in discussions talking about using a refractometer for finding FG based off OG from a refractometer and a hydrometer.
Talked about using both the first few times to obtain your average correction factor, then just being bale to use the correction factor with a brix reading from then on.
If it's as easy as the above spreadsheet then , but I just want to make sure.