First Batch O.G question..

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OK, well I brewed up my very first batch today. Everything seemed to go along pretty smoothly. (I'd already done probably 100 batches in my mind over the past few weeks) Everything that is until I took my O.G. reading, and my brain went "oh oh... what's happening here???". I brewed a Brewers Best Robust Porter kit. The recipe looked pretty good, and I'd read good things about it on here, and several other brewing boards. The recipe says the starting gravity should be 1.050-01.055 I got 1.095. I assumed I did something wrong taking the reading, so I went back, re-sanitized my hydrometer jar and hydrometer, took another sample, and got 1.095. again...

Some details: 2.5 gal boil that was mostly un-eventful except for the difficulty of keeping the steeping water at 160F and not having it climb to 180F, which it did once for probably 2 or 3 minutes. No boil overs or anything like that. After the boil, I had about 2gal left in the pot. I added 3gal of cool (pre-boiled) water in the fermenter to bring the volume up to 5gal.

So yes, of course I'm a little worried.:confused: Any ideas??? suggestions? For right now, it's in the fermenter and I'm going to let it go.
 
Are you sure you have five gallons and aren't a little short? It's normal to lose 1-2 gallons to evaporation during the boiling process. Just having five gallons of water prior to brewing will not be enough. Also, did you stir up your wort before you took your sample? If it settled and you siphoned off the bottom you may get inaccurate results.
 
Two things. Be sure you have 5 gallons in the fermenter and how well did you stir the wort? You might have gotten a sample of concentrated wort if you didn't stir enough to throughly mix the wort with the top off water.
 
+1 to the "stir the wort up really good"....

My first few samples I ever took were off too....But now I stir it up really good with a long sanitized spoon and they are ALOT closer to what they should be...
 
I'm guessing the wort wasn't stirred well enough. I had the two gallons from the boil in the fermenter, and I dumped in 3 gallons of water, I thought pretty violently as it splashed a lot and created probably 3-4 inches of foam on top. Next batch I'll actually use a spoon and stir manually.

Right now, the airlock is bubbling pretty good, I'm going to let it go and see what happens.

mark it down as lesson learned #1...
 
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