OG too low -- how bad will it be?

[BarberSurgeon]

Brewed a 5-gallon batch of IPA from a kit last night. The finale was a bit hectic with lots of distractions. I ended up doing a few things out of order that made taking a measurement difficult. Bottom line is: the beer calls for an OG of 1050. After bringing up to the five-gallon mark, I only had 1040... Am I looking at a watery, low-alcohol, generally unpleasant IPA here? Is there any chance this will be enjoyable?

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

if you topped off with water, you probably just did not get it mixed thoroughly and you will be perfectly fine.

 

[joeguy07]

I had a batch that started out 1.040 O.G. And it ended up with a 4% abv after bottling. It was one of my better tasting brews so don't give up on a batch until you see the bottom of the glass.

 

[HoppyMaltPoet]

if you topped off with water, you probably just did not get it mixed thoroughly and you will be perfectly fine.

I noticed this also last batch I did. I was batch sparging and after my sparge my pre-boil OG was 9 points lower then my intended target. It ended up being that when I took the reading, it was reading my last runnings which were more watered down. As soon as I took a reading from my pot after I had mixed it up a bit I was dead on target.

 

[Revvy]

We get this question every day

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"

More than likely your true OG is really what it's supposed to be. And it will mix itself fine during fermentation.

 

[BarberSurgeon]

Good news. Thanks for the responses. I feel quite a bit better now.

I think I was under inexperienced stress to do everything as quickly as possible to minimize the risk of infection (probably would have been fine any way), when suddenly three or four things not related to brewing started happening all around. Judging from your post Revvy, I might have been a bit off no matter what happened. Thanks for sharing your technique. I will definitely utilize it in the future!

 

[AustinBrewDawg]

I have never hit my target OG, but I've never stirred for more than about 30 seconds. That will change for my next batch. Has anyone ever rigged up a drill powered paint stirrer (sanitized of course) for mixing the wort?