Low OG... add dextrose?

[elielilang]

I followed the recipe to a tee, hit all my temperature and timing marks but for some unknown reason my OG was about .015 lower than i wanted. Here is the basic breakdown.

5gal batch

.75 crystal 40L
.75 carapils
Steep 30 min
7lb amber LME
hops: magnum, cascade and nugget 4oz total (going to add 2 more cascade dryhopped in secondary)

I was expecting a OG of around .055 - .06 but I got .045 i know thats not a big deal, but there is lots of hops in this beer and i want it to be big all around.

My question : if i want to bump up the Final ABV a little (1-2%) is it ok to add a little dextros to the primary? it has been in for about 48 hours so far... any thoughts on doing this? or adding something else?
Thanks for the info. its my 3rd ever brew...
-Eli

 

[elielilang]

bump

 

[nwconicalfermenter]

well if it were me i would of started with like 8lbs extract from the get go if i was adding that many hops or yes added dex as well but i personally dont like adding any special stuff unless its unique like that mexican sugar that comes in the little cones... its brown and cheap... it adds a great little taste very slight yet boost alcohol content... mmmm

 

[Qhrumphf]

Was this full boil or did you top off?

Either one of two things, the volumes were off (possible for either of the above) and you had a bigger volume than you thought...

or if you topped off with water your wort wasn't thoroughly mixed when you took your OG sample.

In either case, I wouldn't mess with it.

 

[elielilang]

It was not a full boil. ~2.5gal. After cooling my wort i added cold water to it in the primary. But I aerated it by scooping .5 gal scoops out and dumping them back in repeatedly, so i feel like the wort was mixed well.

im having another strange issue. I pitched the yeast at 68 but by the next morning the wort was at almost 74! the room it is in is ~65. i assume this is from the metabolic activity of the yeast... so i put the wort outside until the temp dropped to around 65 and then brought it back in. now the airlock activity has all but stopped ( maybe 1 bubble every 10 min...) whats going on here?

 

[Qhrumphf]

It's next to impossible to mix it all the way even shaking the whole thing for a few minutes. It is, however, very difficult to mess up the OG of an extract batch unless you messed up the volume. So as long as your volumes were right, I'd bet money it was a mixing issue.

Active fermentation will definitely cause a spike in temperature. At 74 degrees you'll probably end up with a bit more esters than you'd want. But if you give it some time to age in the bottle, that'll hopefully mellow a bit. In the future, search the site for "swamp coolers" and you can do cheap and easy temperature control.

As for the bubbling, it seems like 3 or 4 days and the bubbling slowed to a crawl? That's pretty normal. Means the really active fermentation is over, and the yeast are finishing up consuming the sugars and then cleaning up after themselves. I'd give it another week, start checking the gravity over a couple days, and once it's stable give it a least a couple days more (if not a week or two) and then bottle.

 

[elielilang]

Thanks for all the helpful info. I just racked to my secondary for dry hoping. it turns out that im not getting a good seal on my primary fermenter. thats the reason im not seeing any action in the airlock. now its popping away at around a bubble a min... gravity is at around 1.02 so a bit longer and it shoud clean up well.
thanks
eli