Gravity after adding fruit to secondary

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JaimeTheLimey

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New to the forums here. Very nice, a lot of info.

Was wondering if any of you guys/girls know a method of adjusting the gravity of your final reading to incorporate the fruit added to the secondary.
Does that make sense?
TIA
 
Some would advise simply throwing away your hydrometer... there are times I agree.

:mug:
 
homebrewer_99 said:
You could take a reading then record it, but in the end it's still og-fg=%.:D
umm...i think you missed the point.
this formula is useless if you add more sugar (fruit) somewhere in the middle. and taking another gravity reading right before and right after adding the fruit is not useful because the sugar is not homogeneously distributed throughout the solution -- it's packaged up inside the fruit...
 
If one adds more sugar somewhere in the process then the reading you take prior to adding, IMO, becomes the FG and possibly an OG.

However, since yeast is already in the batch how is the reading actually credible as an OG?

I would think you would still ferment out as usual and take a reading prior to priming for your real FG.

One way to prove out any of this would be to split the batch into two parts, add fruit to one, but not the other, take your gravity readings and compare them again prior to priming to see if there is a difference.:D
 
Well, your final gravity is your final gravity.
But if (as I assume) you want to know the effect on the alcohol content, I think the only thing you can really do is make an educated guess. Something like 100g fruit = .1% alcohol. You won't be far off, and our alcohol calculations are approximations at best anyway...
 
Since all of the sugars in fruit are fermentable, the FG should be almost the same as without the fruit. You ABV will increase and that will lower the FG a bit.

My cider experiments: Straight juice, FG 0.998 Juice + 1 lb/gallon of sucrose FG 0.995
 
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