Did I miss something?

[pocketjr]

I made a 5 gallon batch a couple of weeks ago....

1 can of coopers blonde
2 pounds of Muntons light DME

Og was 1.032 and FG was 1.008. My math says this makes it 3.15% abv

Shouldn't it be more? Shouldn't the coopers alone come out to that abv? Shouldn't the added DME bring the abv up?

 

[hunter_le five]

Kind of hard to say without knowing your process. Did you add top-up water to your wort after the boil? More importantly, did you add too much?

Considering you were only working with 5.75 lbs of extract, I wouldn't have expected a very high OG, though I would've expected your OG to be a little higher than that. I'm guessing a little too much water to start.

 

[Calder]

What weight was the can of coopers?

Assuming you made 5 gallons as you say:

- The DME would have given you .018 points.

- For every lbof the coopers LME, your gravity would be .007 (example; for 3 lbs , that would be .021).

So if you had 2 lbs of DME and 2 lbs of LME in 5 gallons, your OG would be 1.039.

With extract you can pretty much calculate the OG. Often hydrometer readings are wrong because the wort has not fully mixed with the top-up water.