Winter Warmer

[dasBuhbuh]

Hey, so my roommate and i just brewed our 2nd kit last night. everything went smoothly as we actually got ice and had everything ready haha. extra yeast, pre-boiled water, pitching at <72*....good times. weird thing about it though is we completely missed our OG reading. i checked it just before pitching and it was only about 1.055 or so...considering the kit had 10# of extra pale lme and was supposed to hit an OG of roughly 1.073, something seems amiss. the hydrometer is fine as we had just checked our first brew before bottling it last night as well....weird. oh, and we mixed the hell out of it....

 

[Bigsnake]

I'll just throw some ideas out there then because beersmith gave me 1072 for 10#'s of Pale Extract for a 5 gallon batch. I'm guessing you hit your volume and you mixed well. I'd guess it's just something with the equipment then.

Did you spin the hydrometer to get bubbles off? That will hold it up higher.

Also, if you have a shallow pot, the hydrometer can touch the bottom without you hearing it with all the trub down there. I actually can't check it in my new pot anymore. I have to pull a sample in the thief.

 

[ChshreCat]

Temperature correction?

 

[dasBuhbuh]

well, it was in well over enough liquid, temperature correction would only be at most .001 if that, but i did not spin off the bubbles...perhaps...

 

[IrregularPulse]

I don't think bubbles are going to hold it up 20 points! I know you said you "mixed the hell out of it...." but I'm guessing this is still the culprit. Usually is with extract brews ( I assume thats what this is), it's very difficult to miss the gravity when using extract. Unless you added too much top off water or left some extract in the can/bag

 

[Austin_]

My experience is that LME is rather hard to properly mix and get an accurate hydro reading. It can be done, but I find when I do use LME I am less likely to "reach" my OG. I have never had a probelm recording accurate OG readings with DME.

 

[WorryWort]

It is usually pretty hard to miss OG by much with extracts or kits I think. But, I brewed a bitter the other week that was 1.031 rather than the target 1.044 when I checked it that night. The next day it was 1.042.

Having eliminate bubbles on the hydrometer my theory is that it wasn't properly mixed and there was some settling of the heavier wort to the bottom and the water was mostly at the top (where I took the reading from that time). It mixed properly once it started bubbling around so the reading went up later.

 

[dasBuhbuh]

Im gonna hope this was the case. i guess you can never mix too much... but yea, i cant test it until i work up the effort to get to the lhbs and buy some more sanitizer. thanks for the suggestions.