Noob hydrometer question

[ljastangs21]

Okay so i messed up and didnt take a hydrometer reading before adding the yeast. I took one today and i forget the exact number but the whole thing was almost under the wort. Only a tiny part was sticking up. Its been a week so my question is should the hydrometer be this low of should more of it be coming out of the wort?

Does the hydrometer go up or down after fermentation?

 

[xenocide]

There's really no way of knowing without knowing exactly what the hydrometer reading is (and really your recipe). Different beers finish at vastly different gravities. The important thing is to check several times over a couple days to be sure that it's not still going down. When it remains constant for a couple days, you (pretty much) know it's done fermenting, so you're not going to have bottle bombs.

EDIT: The hydrometer reading will go down during fermentation, as the sugars (heavier than water) are converted to alcohol (lighter than water)

 

[Captain Damage]

If you're brewing with extract or extract+specialty grains you can safely assume your OG was whatever the recipe or kit said it shoould be. For most ales the lion's share of fermentation will be done in a week, so getting a low hydrometer reading now means things are going just as they should

 

[rico567]

If you're brewing extract, there is little reason to take an OG reading of the wort (although this is important in all-grain, for reasons discussed in any good reference, I suggest Palmer's How to Brew). The question now remains, what is the reading of the wort after fermentation? The FG reading is the important one.....

 

[Andy_LV]

this thread is sorta pointless without more details - what was the recipe, whats the total volume of brew, ingredients? yeast?

having those details one could put in the numbers in some smart web calculator and get estimate OG and FG...

fyi, hydrometer sinks deeper as your beer ferments - more alcohol in brew, less sugars, less density of liquid.