Milk Stout low OG reading

[Bbbeldums1]

I had a brewers best Milk Stout kit and I followed the directions perfectly. After chilling the wort to exactly 70 degrees I placed it into my primary fermenter, and added the extra 2.5 gallons of water to make it a perfect 5 gallon batch. When I took my OG reading and it was 1.038? It should have been 1.057-1.061. I'm assuming there is nothing I can do to change the OG at this point. My main question is what will this do do the beer?

 

[ETCS]

When making extract only batches, sometimes if you don't mix it well enough before taking the gravity, the "Heavier" extract will stay the bottom wiht the thiner water at the top and it could skew your gravity results. With all extract kits, if you made it per the instructions, I would worry too much about the OG.

 

[unionrdr]

No matter whether I'm brewing AE or PM,I do partial boils With top off. I pour all through a fine mesh strainer in a circular motion to aerate as well as strain stuff out. But doing the same with the top off water does seem to help a bit with initial mixing of both. But what really helps is the 5 solid minutes of rough stirring to mix them both well & aerate a bit more. I get more accurate OG readings this way.

 

[Bbbeldums1]

That's the problem! It was 4am, and I was sleepy. I put the wort in first, and then the rest of the water. I didn't stir it super good, bc I wanted to be done and go to bed. Glad to know that stuff! Thanks guys!