whoops!!!

[bartbinga]

I was making up a brew screwed up I guess when I took the OG it was 1.026 I was like what that is not worth making potential % of like 2.3 or something....What can I add to bring up the OG before I add the yeast??

Took more than one test to assure it was not something wrong 2 hygrometers....

 

[Shaneoco1981]

What was the recipe?

 

[Shaneoco1981]

Was it a Partial boil that you added water too after?

 

[davis119]

keep boiling down untill u get an OG you want.... or add some dme and boil

 

[Shaneoco1981]

Davis, the reason I asked is the odds of him actually having that low of a OG was slim to none. My guess is it was a partial boil, he topped off with water, and it is not mixed well. My guess is he is much closer to the OG that he was looking for.

 

[bartbinga]

It was from a kit....I am just going to add honey and let it ride with what it is...its a honey blond ale any how

 

[Shaneoco1981]

Was it a partial boil?

 

[bartbinga]

No it was a brewhhouse kit....no boil nessasary... sorry should have posted that last time

 

[Fid]

If its an extract kit theres almost no way your OG is actually wrong.

 

[Shaneoco1981]

Boil is always necessary. I have never heard of a kit where you don't need to boil.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Chances are you did not stir enough and your reading is off because you are testing the less dense, more watery wort rather than the more dense wort at the bottom of the fermenter. If there's no boil involved then there's no way you could have screwed that up enough to get a 2% beer, unless you poured half the kit down the drain.

 

[Fid]

Boil is always necessary. I have never heard of a kit where you don't need to boil.

I've seen them but I'm with you... a boil should always be necessary. I'd definitely be more concerned about how sanitary a no boil beer is rather than the OG, which again, I'm sure isn't actually that far off.

 

[bartbinga]

ya I added too much water to it I figgured that out...and ya this kit has no boil...

 

[Fid]

What was the expected OG?

 

[Fid]

I did some looking into these kits. Correct me if I'm wrong but these kits come with a 4 gallon bag of wort that has a gravity of 1.080 to which you add some water and pitch the yeast. To bring your gravity down from 1.080 would mean that you added WAY too much water.
If you started with 4 gallons of wort at 1.080 and added another 4 gallons of water your gravity would still be 1.040. Did you add 8 gallons of water to this thing?

 

[quick5pnt0]

Boil is always necessary. I have never heard of a kit where you don't need to boil.

Coopers kits are no boil. They actually advise against it.

 

[Fid]

Coopers kits are no boil. They actually advise against it.

And most of us advise that step one to brewing a Cooper's kit is to throw away the instructions and the yeast that comes with it. :cross:

 

[Runyanka]

And most of us advise that step one to brewing a Cooper's kit is to throw away the instructions and the yeast that comes with it. :cross:

This is the best advice I've seen all day.

 

[aidan]

Looks what OP has is a fresh wort kit. If instructions say do not boil, then do not boil because if you do, you will screw up the hops profile. If it's no boil, it will come packaged in sanitary condition.

Back to the original problem, looks like you possibly over diluted it by adding about twice as much water as you should have. Let us know how much water you have added and what was the volume of fresh wort you added so we can determine if its an over dilution problem or a reading error. Also how much more volume can your fermenting vessle take?

One option if overdilution is the issue is to add some malt extract. But you may need to do a boil with some hops since the kit will just have enough hops added for a smaller vol, or use pre-hopped malt extract (e.g. Coopers). Another option is to pick up another one of these kits and turn it into a double batch. But do confirm that it really IS significantly overdiluted before taking this type of corrective action. Before doing anything, recheck how much water the instructions say to add and compare that to what you have added. If it's close, then you've just measured a sample that wasn't mixed properly or your hydrometer is way off (did you check that it reads 1.000 for plain water?)