sg too low.

[Aarong2008]

Hello, today was the second time I brewed a extract kit and when I topped my fermenting bucket and the SG was off a lot. I brewed a bsg dark saison today that was supposed to have a SG of 1.060 and it when I took the reading it was 1.034. The kit came with 2 x 3.3lb Cans of pilsen lme and 1lb of wheat dme. It also has 1lb of steeping grains. Can anyone tell me what happened?

The other kit I brewed was a northern brewer Irish red ale that was supposed to be a 1.044 and my reading I took was 1.030. I also filled my hydrometer tube with water and the sg was 1.000 so I don't think the hydrometer is broken.

http://bsghandcraft.com/index.php/black-saison-tb-ing-kit.html

 

[BBA]

So, you did a partial boil then topped with water to make 5 gallons? I'd assume the water/wort wasn't well mixed in the sample you measured.

 

[Derp]

At what temperature were the readings taken?

 

[Aarong2008]

The temperature was 70 degrees.

Sorry, I wrote my post very fast, I did a partial boil and cooled down and transferred to my primary bucket. I then added water to make five gallons.

I did not mix the wort after I filled it with water.

 

[WisePrey]

You have to mix the water and wort up or you're reading will be more top off water than wort. If you're brewing straight from a kit, it's pretty hard to actually miss the original gravity reading by that much.

 

[theseeker4]

The temperature was 70 degrees.

Sorry, I wrote my post very fast, I did a partial boil and cooled down and transferred to my primary bucket. I then added water to make five gallons.

I did not mix the wort after I filled it with water.

The problem is that it is very difficult to completely mix the water with the wort when you top up. Even if you stirred well, you can still end up with stratification and your measurement will be off. If you have the correct volume of wort at the end after topping off, and you used the correct amount of extract, you hit you OG. No need to measure with extract. There are no issues of efficiency when using extract to brew, so carefully measuring the OG is not important as long as your volumes are accurate. You simply will need a FG measurement to ensure it is complete and to calculate your ABV.

 

[Aarong2008]

Thank you all for your responses. I assumed it would mix up while I topped it off. But all of your responses make perfect sense. This hasn't really happened before so I was thrown off my the og measurement and freaked out
.

 

[kadozen]

I do partial boils too. To avoid the bad readings from stratification, I aerate first. I figure after 5 minutes of vigorous stirring, a 30 second breather, and 5 more minutes being vigorous with it, it's gotta be mixed. Never had a bad read as far as I can tell.

Like others have said though, if you're doing all extract, is more of a matter of volume being accurate than anything else. I'm doing partial mash myself so I need to more closely monitor it, but FWIW I recommend extract brewers get into the practice of taking the accurate hydrometer readings if they plan to one day go PM or AG