Cider went below hydro reading

[jkuhl]

My cider went below hydro reading, I added about a quarter pound of brown sugar and my sample was still below what the hydrometer can read. Should I just keep adding brown sugar until the hydrometer floats high enough for a reading?

The recipe was How to Make Hard Cider: Homebrew it!, the yeast was Lalvin D47 and it started at 1.086

 

[bracconiere]

i'd just guesstimate...do you have a refrac? you can use one and being you know your OG, calculate current gravity?

 

[jkuhl]

Well I just wasted an hour of my life I think

Just double checked my hydrometer in water and it sank to below 0.990. Tap water, but still.

My other hydrometer reads 1.0 appropriately in water. Dunno what's happening but all the readings I took today are now null and void. I was rinsing it off and putting it back in starsan solution between every read (rinsing it in clean water before putting it in starsan to avoid contaminating my star san).

Apparently I have a broken hydrometer. Don't know why, doesn't look cracked or anything, and it should be clean given how much it got rinsed off and then doused in star san.

 

[bracconiere]

Well I just wasted an hour of my life I think

edit:



https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/official-broken-hydrometer-count.148083/page-43

(if only you could do a colab video with slomo guys on youtube, to bury it, properly)

 

[bracconiere]

oh, that was room temp tap water right?

 

[jkuhl]

oh, that was room temp tap water right?

Yeah straight out of the faucet. I usually pass it through a brita filter when I'm brewing though. But there's no reason for a hydrometer to be reading well below 0.990 for regular water I can't imagine.

My other hydrometer gave a reading of 1.008, with the extra 4 oz of brown sugar (which I guess I didn't need) which makes a lot more sense.

 

[JAReeves]

Others may be able to pipe in on this, but could you just make the adjustments on paper, if the hydro is reading below 1.000 for tap water?

 

[JP_BeerFan]

I guess it's possible for the paper gauge in the tube to move, say with a hard rap, bottoming out during a reading or such. If it slides down, that would uncalibrate it in the direction of reading low....