bad hydrometer????

[littled630]

Ok i have been brewing extract pilsen light with german hallertau hops and coopers brewing yeast. I do 1 gal batches. I boil water for about 5 minutes to clean it then add my hops and start a timer for 45 min. I then add 1lb of my dme then i add the other 1/2lb of dme 20 min before flame out(i do this to lighten the color). Now my last batch i took a sample and read OG. I think the sample was about 85° still and gave me an OG of 1.068. FG on that batch ended up being 1.012 still came close to my target 1.010. Now the batch i brewed today, i cooled it to 70° before taking my sample and got an OG of 1.090. Is it possible for a ale with these ingredients to reach almost 8% ABV? Or could my hydrometer be bad? Maybe im doing something wrong? Just 1.090 seems really high for an ale, and if it still hits its target FG it will have about 8%ABV!!!

 

[homebrewdad]

If you are worried about your hydrometer, put it in plain water. Should give you a 1.000. I've had one die already (.996 in water).

Good news, though - that's not your problem.

You are brewing with extract. You're probably doing a partial boil and topping it off with plain water to reach your volume, right?

What's happening is that you are getting more wort than water in your sample. It's really tough to get a complete mixture... think about pouring some honey in a cup of water, then stirring it with a spoon. Would that mixture be uniform?

The good news is that the yeast will mix it 100% for you.

If you used all of the extract for the recipe/kit, and you hit your volume, just use the recipe's OG number. The fact is that your extract contans a set amount of sugar, so you literally cannot mess it up.

 

[littled630]

No i dont add water i start with about 1.25 gal which after evap and what the yeast soaks up it comes out to a gal. Thanks for the info ill just assume 1.060 on each batch for OG.

 

[ajf]

The probable cause is that you are doing 1g batches. If you boil off an extra qt (which is very easy to do) you will end up with an OG that is 25% high.
If you were making a 5g batch and did the same thing, it would only make a 5% difference.

You could also top off to 1g with water after the boil, which would reduce the gravity.

-a.

 

[littled630]

Thanks guys!

 

[USMCBrewer]

If you are worried about your hydrometer, put it in plain water. Should give you a 1.000. I've had one die already (.996 in water)

Is this not something that you can just compensate for by adding .004 to your reading? My hydrometer read .996 in filtered water from my fridge @ 60* (temp that it's calibrated for). Guess I need to get a new one?

 

[littled630]

Is this not something that you can just compensate for by adding .004 to your reading? My hydrometer read .996 in filtered water from my fridge @ 60* (temp that it's calibrated for). Guess I need to get a new one?

I would think you could do that but keep checking the calibration before each use. Then again i dont know hydrometers very well so maybe someone else could confirm this