Gravity increasing

[iron_city_ap]

So I just finished bottling a batch of a regular ol' wheat. Nothing really fancy, no wierd additives (irish moss, yeast nutrient to the boil).

Initially, the gravity was 1.032 @70F on 1-20. I racked it to the secondary on 1-29 the gravity showed 1.012 @63-65F. Today I bottled and the gravity was showing @ 1.020-1.018 @65F. It was kept in the same place as all of my other batches, which is in my closet with a towel covering to keep it extra dark with a pretty constant temp and it wasn't moved until I racked to the secondary and then sat idle again the two weeks it was in secondary.

What, if anything does this indicate? The only other time I've seen anything like it was a couple batches ago, and after 3 weeks in the bottles, the beer, an English Brown Ale, was worse and more bitter than when it was bottled. I'm not talking the good kind of bitter. I'm talking the more spoiled tasting bitter. It was completely undrinkable and I ended up pitching that entire batch.

Guess I should also mention, that I tasted some of it and other than it being flat, didn't really taste all that bad. A little sharpness to it, but nothing I would really think was that far off.

I have another partial batch which is actually an experiment off of this batch that has some banana slices in it that I will be bottling next week. Just taking the lid off of it and smelling, it has an extremely sharp smell to it.

 

[BarleyWater]

Did you take that gravity reading after adding the priming sugar?

 

[iron_city_ap]

Yeah. I meant to mention that but forgot. I used 6oz of priming sugar and the batch size was a little over 4 gal. I wouldn't think that amount of sugar would rise the gravity by that much, but there is a reason I'm posting in the beginner section....

 

[TipsyDragon]

yea well the extra surgar will raise your SG reading .... also did you temperature correct the readings?

 

[BarleyWater]

Just taking the lid off of it and smelling, it has an extremely sharp smell to it.

CO2 will damn near burn the hairs out of your nostrils.

I am willing to bet that accounting for temp corrections, you are right where you should be. The gravity can not increase without you adding something to it or removing some of the water by freezing, and the addition of the priming sugar should have bumped it up 4 points or so.

 

[iron_city_ap]

yea well the extra surgar will raise your SG reading .... also did you temperature correct the readings?

My hydrometer is calibrated for 60F. The next conversion step it shows is at 77F the gravity goes up by .001. I figure it is off a bit, but shouldn't be off by all that much. Plus, the temperature was pretty much the same when I racked to the secondary and in bottling. My primary and secondary are about 2 inches apart from each other.

BarleyWater, good to know that its the CO2 and not something bad that I was smelling. Singed nose hairs about describes the smell. Since I split the batch, I poured some steam off of some dry ice over both partial batches to protect them a little more. I'm guessing thats what it is then.

Thanks for the quick responses.