Missed My OG big time

[brewtus-maximus]

So I was trying my first IPA and I had read that you should filter your hops after the boil. I had never done this before though; usually I let them into the fermenter. So long story short, like a newb, I filtered with a much finer filter than I should have used and consequently I lost a ton of my sugars. My OG was about 1.031. I have had it in primary for almost a week now and it had fermented well enough and is now settling. I'm wondering if there is anything that I can so to beef up the body at this point. I am worried that the hops will overpower it since my gravity is so low.

Has anyone ever performed a mini-mash and added it to their secondary or is that even possible?

 

[blizzard]

Can you tell us a little more about your process? I can't really think of a way a homebrewer would be able to filter out the sugars, since they are dissolved.

 

[cyanmonkey]

There's no way you filtered out sugars, short of distillation.

 

[Conan]

You didn't filter the sugars. As blizzard suggested the sugars are dissolved and effectively can't be filtered.
I'm guessing you did a partial boil and used top-up water after the boil. Frequently, the wort isn't 100% mixed before the hydrometer sample is taken. Your O.G. sample will be either way high or way low. Don't sweat it---record your F.G. and start fresh on the next batch.
If you did hit a low O.G. you could potentially add some table sugar to the fermenter. People do this with some Belgian styles to gain both high ABV and a lower F.G., but I won't recommend it at this point. If you're very sanitary, you could take a hydrometer sample now and see what it's up to. If it were me I'd let it go.
Just curious- what did you use to filter? Kyle

 

[brewtus-maximus]

Cool thanks. I used on of those filters that fits into a funnel. It came with my starter kit. It's pretty fine though and I caught a lot of trub.

That said, do I need to mix my Carboy before I get my OG next time or what?

 

[brewtus-maximus]

Also thinking about what you said... It was an extract brew and yes I added water to the wort after it was all said and done. My boil only yielded about a gallon. So I had to top it off big time likely making for some serious variations in the layers of wort.