Quick - Can I take a gravity reading at begining of fermentation?

[kontrol]

Made the beer yesterday and pitched yeast almost 24 hours ago. It's currently fermenting and I was wondering if I could take a gravity reading (With evertything sanitized of course).

Reason is yesterday when I took my reading I was at 1.050 instead 1.060 (calculated everything in beersmith). Only thing I can see is that instead of 23L in the bucket, I have 23.5. But I guess I shouldn't be off by 0.010. So I though maybe it's because I do partial and it wasn't properly mixed when I took my sample.

What's funny is I took the sample from the bottom of the bucket, not the top. So I should get a higher gravity if this was the problem.

Should I take a reading now? If it's over 1.050 at the moment I could "assume" I was almost on target. However It might be too late since it's fermenting already.

EDIT: It's all LME, DME and 1 pound of Crystal.

 

[freisste]

Don't take one. It's too late to get an OG and too early for a non OG measurement to matter. What you are doing is called extract with specialty grains, by the way, not partial. With extract, your OG will be what the kit said unless you didn't use all the ingredients or got the water volume wrong. Safe to assume OG was on target.

 

[SeraphX117]

don't mess with it and let the yeast do their job...freisste is right...you generally get the og the recipe calls for with extract...was the wort cooled when you took your OG?

 

[kontrol]

Don't take one. It's too late to get an OG and too early for a non OG measurement to matter. What you are doing is called extract with specialty grains, by the way, not partial. With extract, your OG will be what the kit said unless you didn't use all the ingredients or got the water volume wrong. Safe to assume OG was on target.

Sorry I meant partial BOIL and not partial MASH. It's not a kit it's my own recipe and planned my recipe in beersmith. I used all the one I added in the recipe. So I should think it is 1.060 and not 1.050 because it's extract and thus "100%" efficiency?

 

[zeg]

That's right. Other than a measurement error (too much water or not enough extract), it'd be hard to miss your OG by 15-20% in that recipe. Your pound of crystal is the only gravity contribution that can give you less than 100% efficiency depending on your technique, and that's only about 5% of your OG. Even if you extracted nothing from the steep, you'd only miss by about 0.003.

The other possibility is that you used the wrong PPG for your extract. It's not common for the widely available extracts (at least around the US), but some extracts do have much lower PPG than is generally assumed. What type of LME/DME did you use? You can usually find a data sheet on the manufacturer's website---it may not be batch-specific, but it would be enough to tell you if this is a possible explanation.

But I'd put my money on your first guess: poor mixing. It is surprisingly difficult to get complete mixing in a partial boil.

 

[Stones]

Have you calibrated your hydrometer? Was the temperature of the wort when you took your reading? Most hydrometers are calibrated to 60'F or 68'F, your hydrometer should have came with directions describing whether its calibrated to 60' or 68' F. This means that pure water should read 1.000 at the target temperature your hydrometer has been calibrated to.

Your hydrometer instructions should have also described adjusting the gravity reading based on temperature of wort at time of reading. Usually plus or minus .002 for every few degrees.

This could be reason for discrepancy

Either way I wouldn't worry about the OG at this point. Lesson learned for next brew...