Is there any way to figure FG after adding conditioning sugar?

[pc_trott]

My brain short-circuited again, and I siphoned my wort into the bottling bucket with the conditioning sugar before I remembered to check FG. Here are the particulars:

• An all-grain IPA from a regional brew shop.
• The OG was 1.059@67F.
• The ersatz FG was 1.06@68F. ("Wait," I said, "That can't be! Oops!")
• I used 3.9 oz. of corn sugar in five gals of wort.

Go ahead and tell me I'm a numbskull. I can take it!

 

[Gusso]

Perhaps it was actually 1.006. 4 ounces of corn sugar won't affect your gravity very much.

 

[pc_trott]

Perhaps it was actually 1.006. 4 ounces of corn sugar won't affect your gravity very much.

I don't think so. The brew fermented prodigiously, moving vast quantities of foam through the blow-off tube for several days. And if the FG was 1.06, Brewheads.com's specific gravity calculator says an OG of 1.059@67F and an FG of 1.06@68F would amount to an ABV of negative 0.16%. That would suggest that all those yeast cells were just showboating during the ferment, but not doing any actual work. Not only that, but they were consuming more alchohol than they were producing! (Where can I get a job like that?)

 

[Spundit]

1lb of Dextrose will add 42 gravity points to a gallon. ....So I believe 4oz of dextrose added about 2 gravity points to your 5 gallon batch.

If you measured 1.006, it was actually 1.004 before the sugar addition.

If you did actually measure 1.060 than it was 1.058 before the sugar addition. I would be very concerned about bottling a 1.058 wort/beer. I suspect you made some sort of measuring error somewhere.

Hopefully that makes sense. Good luck

 

[bracconiere]

do you have a refractometer? i've recently found comparing both it with a hydro is very revealing.....in all kinds of ways, with the right calculators...

 

[pc_trott]

I suspect you made some sort of measuring error somewhere.

It is very likely that you are correct. In fact, the OG was measured with a friend's refractometer, and the post-sugar-addition measurement was with my cheapo hydrometer, so there may be some disparity. The brew sat in the primary for a month, and in a secondary (I know, I know...) for two weeks before bottling.

do you have a refractometer?

I need to get one of those, amongst other brewing necessities.