A Question?

[Rebelz1]

First off I would like to thank everyone on here for all the helpful advice on everything I have done so far. I have been a member of this forum for a week now and this is only my 2nd post! Have to say the search is priceless!!!! Have had a ton of questions, and all of them have been answered by a simple search. But right now I am tired of searching and reading a 20 page post to get my answer.

Now as for my question I bottled my second batch last night it went very good and smooth just will take some getting used to, (I used Revvy techniques from the bottling & kegging forum Thanks Revvy!!!) but on the Og of 1.040 and the Fg of 1.014 I come up with a 3.55 ABV is this correct? That is really much lower then what I wanted. I'm wondering if I did the calculations right?

Any help would be great!

 

[Homebrewtastic]

Yeah your calculations are solid. What were you making? What was your recipe?

 

[whatsleftofyou]

Yes that sounds about right. Some more info on your beer would be helpful. What style was it and was it a kit? Was your original gravity lower than you had anticipated?

 

[Brewenstein]

1.040 - 1.014 = .026 * 131 (a constant for figuring ABV) = 3.4% ABV. Sounds like you made a nice session beer.

To increase alcohol content you would need to use more base grain / extract to get a higher OG. Of course you may need to adjust the hop schedule as well.

What type of beer was this? What did the recipe call for as an OG?

 

[Revvy]

Well before we know for sure if your calculations were correct we need to know if your numbers were correct especially you OG. It's best to post your recipe so we can run the numbers. I'm assuming you did and extract or a partial mash, right?

See, it's a pretty common issue for ANYONE topping off with water in the fermenter (and that includes partial mashes, extract or all grain revcipes) to have an error in reading the OG...In fact, it is actually nearly impossible to mix the wort and the top off water in a way to get an accurate OG reading...

Brewers get a low reading if they get more of the top off water than the wort, conversely they get a higher number if they grabbed more of the extract than the top off water in their sample.

When I am doing an extract with grain recipe I make sure to stir for a minimum of 5 minutes (whipping up a froth to aerate as well) before I draw a grav sample and pitch my yeast....It really is an effort to integrate the wort with the top off water...This is a fairly common new brewer issue we get on here...unless you under or over topped off or the final volume for the kit was 5 gallons and you topped off to 5.5, then the issue, sorry to say, is "operator error"

If your target volume was correct, then it will be fine.

More than likely your true OG is really what it's supposed to be in your recipe.

 

[Rebelz1]

Yeah your calculations are solid. What were you making? What was your recipe?

It was just a basic Muntons Bock extract 5 gal. Not really anything special but really to see how it turns out. Did as per the instructions for the boil and added 2.2 lbs of corn sugar and added the yeast to the wort at 72-74*. Fermented for 10 days.

 

[Rebelz1]

I didn't want to get too technical for being my second batch so I went with this. The Instructions say to get the Hydrometer at a constant of 1.008. It quit bubbling out of the airlock after 6 days and stayed at the 1.014 for three days so I bottled. It tasted really really good out of the bottling bucket too! lol

 

[Rebelz1]

Is there anything as far as specifics you guy need to know about my batch? I mean I don't really know how to put it other then post my whole process. there were no hops involved in this one.