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Pale Ales and Such

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Hello, I just finished brewing my first 5 gallon batch and it was from northern brewer. The OG I was getting was 1.050, but then when I checked the temperature of the batch, it was about 80 degrees. To help cool it down faster, I emptied some of the batch and added cool water. When I tested with the hydrometer again, this time it was reading at 1.022.

1.022 seems like weak gravity for OG. Am I incorrect in this? Is there anything I can do if the gravity is too weak?

thank you!
 
If you took away wort and replaced it with water, you will definitely get a lower gravity. The wort is sugar extracted from grains + water, if you replace some of it with water it will of course become less concentrated.
Think of it as taking a glass of orange juice, pouring some out and topping up again with water, you will have weaker juice. Just let it chill longer with whatever chilling method you use.
 
Yeah, as Erik said. But it may not be as bad 1.022. And it may not have started at 1.050.

Unfermented wort stratifies. Unless you gave the whole wort a good mixing before pulling your sample it's possible you pulled a very watery sample.

The math is pretty easy on this one.

Say...

5gal @ 1.050
Pour off 1gal, add 1gal water
(4gal @ 50)+(1gal @ 00) = (5gal @ 1.0xx)
(.8*50)+(.2*00)=5gal @ 1.0xx
40+00=xx
5gal @ 1.040


But really, don't pour off good sugary wort.
 
+1 to whats already been said.

If you haven't already pitched your yeast there's a number of things you can do to get it back up. Assuming this is an extract batch, you could boil a small amount of the same malt extract and top up with that. You'd just have to do the math to figure out how much you need to get back to your target SG.
 
Bringing the gravity back up via extract is definitely a possibility, but it would skew the bittering to gravity ratio.

Say 25IBU at 1.050
BU:GU 25:50=.5
Diluted as in my example brings it to 20:40=.5
Bring the gravity back up to 1.050...
20:50=.4
 
That worked (adding about 2lbs of DME), brought it up to about 1.043, which I’m ok with at this point lol.

thanks everyone for the advice and info! I honestly thought I was gonna have to throw out the entire batch.Def a good learning experience here.
 
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