HELP!! OG reading is literally off the chart !

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KuraKura

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Hi,

I just brewed an all extract batch. i brewed in my kitchen stove and i think the fire was not big enough and the water was too much so the wort didn't boil too vigorously.
So here is the recipe.
13L of water in the pot
1.6 KG of LDME,
14 g of cascade hops @60
7g @ 30
7g @ 10
8g @ 2
off fire, cover lid and rest for 20 mnts.
Cooling down to ferment temp in 1 hour.
After i transfer the wort (it's a full boil) into my fermentation bucket and have a check on the OG, the hydrometer floats as if it floats on water. So i thought my hydrometer is broken (i just bought it) and pitch in the yeast and put it in my fermentation fridge and hope for the best.

So, have any of you experienced this? Is it because the sugar level is too high and i should add water? or should i just leave it for a couple of days and see how it goes?

p.s. i wanted to post a pic of my reading but the website can't upload my photo :(
 
How many litres did you end up with in the fermenter? If you started with 13 before the boil, you should have about 9 litres at the end of the boil with approximate OG of 1.053 which is a perfectly normal strength brew. If you had a bad boil then the volume will be somewhere between 9 and 13 with a lower gravity.

Since you are using DME I'm sure you will still get beer - unlike all-grain where things can go really pear-shaped. In theory if you have a good measurement of the DME you added and the amount of wort you have then you should be able to get a fairly close gravity estimate.
 
After the boil it ended up to 10 L, then i check the OG. After that i topped of with cold water to 12 L. check the OG again, same thing happen.

So i shouldn't tweak anything and just let it ferment then?
 
I'm not sure what is happening with your hydrometer - if you haven't used one before, could it be that you aren't reading it correctly? Mine has 3 different scales on it which can be confusing, took me a while to figure it out.

Either way I would let the fermentation proceed. Probably you have a wort between 1.040 and 1.043 which will give you a 4% beer. It's good to have a reliable hydrometer so you can track the progress of the fermentation but you will still get beer without one.

I would let this ferment, give it extra time fermenting after the airlock stops bubbling to reduce the risk of bottle bombs (maybe 3 weeks fermenting total), and try to figure out what is happening with the hydrometer before the next brew.

If you can post that pic of the hydrometer reading to a site like tinypic.com then people can comment on that, might shed some light on what is happening.
 
I have brewed before so i know how to take a reading. mine fell off and broke so i had to buy a new one.

Thanks for the web suggestions, so here is the pic
34eq3id.jpg

f99i1.jpg
 
Thats not a specific gravity hydrometer. It looks like one used for spirits to measure proof abv. Google pr (sitting on the bottom of your hydrometer. Cant read the middle letters) and see what comes up. If you also look, the scale is upside down to an SG hydrometer
 
What @andrewf1985 said.^ Wrong hydrometer.

One good thing about all-extract brewing is that if you added all your recipe's malt extract (1.6 kg), you have the correct recipe's volume in your fermentor (12l), and you didn't lose any wort during the process, (in other words, all your wort is in the fermentor), your gravity should be spot on (1.047).

http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
 
Oh God. i think you are correct. no wonder it looks different than the first one i had. i guess i have to go to the shop again then. was a bit worried abt my beer a while ago. now i don't anymore.

THANKS GUYS. REALLY APPRECIATED
Cheers.
 

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