Stone IPA clone OG at 1.082!!

I just got done brewing an extract kit put together by my local home brew store who said it was very close to Stone's IPA. The recipe was:

7 lbs of Light Dry Malt Extract
.5 lb Crystal Malt 20L
.5 lb Crystal 40L
.5 Victory Malt

1.5 oz Centennial (bittering)
1 oz Cascade (Flavor)


Came out to about 5.5 gals. I took the OG and it read 1.082 at 80F. They claim that the starting gravity should be 1.063 with a final of 1.016.

I'm not sure what i did wrong. That just seems wayyyy high to me. If i hit the FG that would be 8.5% ABV.

did you add any extra malts??

Nope, just what i posted.

At 5.5 gallons I put that at around 1.047 OG. No way you could have gotten an OG that high unless you had more grains or malt extracts. Fact of the matter is, you CAN'T get that far off your gravity if you are doing an extract brew unless you use too much, and since it's all pre-measured, and the specialty grains don't add that much to the gravity anyway, I'd say either you read it wrong, or you should throw away your hydrometer, Does it read 1.000 when in plain water?

Calibrate your hydrometer maybe.

Temp of your sample?

Tap water reads 1.001. The temperature of the wort was 80F. If i check the gravity in a few days and it's still toohigh should i add more water?

That is bizarre. At 80F the reading is actually low, if your hydrometer is zeroed at 60F then it means the corrected reading was actually 1.084.

The only way I could see those ingredients giving that measurement is if you only topped up to about 4 gallons total, but you say you have 5.5.

Maybe the wort wasn't mixed up well enough or you had some air bubbles under the hydrometer. You should have 1.063 for a 5.5 gallon primary. It's impossible for it to be higher with those ingredients. For some reason, your reading is wrong.

So, don't add water! Check the s.g. again when fermentation stops- it should be in that f.g range. For extract batches, it's always good to check the og, but it's not possible for it to vary much. Sometimes it's lower because you don't get every bit out of the packages, but it can't be higher.

Is there a way to calculate if the OG is 1.082 but I made a mistake and it's only 5 gal what it would be for 5.5 gal?

I calculated it with Beersmith. For 5 gallons, the og would be 1.063, sorry. I used 5 gallons before. For 5.5 gallons, the og would be 1.057. For 4.5 gallons, 1.070.For 4 gallons, 1.078.

On promash i'm getting:
5.5 gallons: 1.066
5 gallons: 1.072

Did you do a full boil or partial... if you did a partial boil make sure the wort and the added water is thoroughly mixed you could be getting straight wort without the dilution of the added water...

Did you make sure NOT to add your priming sugar too...

Maybe I only did put 5 gal of water in. I have a piece of tape on the carboy to designate 5.25 gal. The level of the wort with the hops and everything in the carboy is .75 inches above that tape. I assumed that was enough to make it 5.5 gal. But i didn't take into consideration that as the hops and such. Now the stuff on the bottom is taking up more like an inch or more space. I usually strain that stuff out but i'm making an IPA so i thought it would be good to keep them in. It's already starting to ferment so I'm not sure if taking a reading now would do any good.

SHould i add a half gallon of water? Or leave it alone? What would be better too concentrated or too diluted?

Thanks for the help so far.

Leave it alone- it'll still be beer. I'm still convinced that your og is wrong. No way an extract brew can miss by more than a couple of points. Your beer will be fine and it knows what to do.

Yooper Chick said:

Leave it alone- it'll still be beer. I'm still convinced that your og is wrong. No way an extract brew can miss by more than a couple of points. Your beer will be fine and it knows what to do.

Click to expand...

I agree with this being an extract brew it is most likely a bad reading so there isn't much point in basing corrective action on it.

So worst case is it's going to be a little bit stronger. Not too bad.