low alcohol?

[buzzen]

What was your recipe? 1.040 seems low...especially if you were expecting to have a beer higher in ABV and especially given this was a hop stoopid clone (which should have a much higher OG). If your OG was 1.040 and your FG is 1.020, you've got yourself a 2.6% ABV beer.

I'm thinking your OG is off - if you topped off with fresh water at the end of your boil it is difficult to get a good reading. However, given an extract recipe, it is pretty straight forward to figure out what your OG probably was. Did the recipe list an expected OG?

Your right I did top off with fressh water. The O.G. in the recipe was supposed to be 1.074

 

[JLem]

Your right I did top off with fressh water. The O.G. in the recipe was supposed to be 1.074

Assuming you followed the recipe and your volume measurements were accurate, your real OG was almost certainly closer to the expected 1.074 value. So, an FG of 1.020 is not so bad. You got ~73% apparent attenuation from the yeast, which is good, and you're looking at ~7% ABV.

 

[buzzen]

Okay awesome just tried it and it read 1.019. So I got a little drop in O.G. thanks for the help its awesome that.there are forums like these around