SG swings after Tilt bounced off bottom of fermenter

[Docod44]

I have been fermenting a simple mead for the past 26 days and I have been taking refractometer readings (with a correction calculator of course) and the fermentation is about 80% done. My tilt isn't in use so I decided to sanitize it and drop it in to get a steady log of SG changes to know when the batch is done, as well as to see how close my refractometer readings are. I dropped the tilt from the airlock hole of my 3 gallon fermonster and it bounced pretty hard off the bottom of the fermenter before floating back to the top. The initial SG reading was 0.966 (FG target 0.946), then it increased to 1.003 and now an hour later it is reading 1.017 (my corrected refractometer reading was 1.010 for reference). This is only the second time using my tilt, and the first batch I used it in was a pale ale and there were virtually no SG swings like this. Do you think I knocked something loose when I dropped it in, or is it just settling?

 

[hotbeer]

Might be the yeast and stuff you disturbed at the bottom getting woke up again for a snack on whatever is remaining. Give it some time. A few hours is nothing. Think in terms of days.