O.G. seems low what would you do?

[SFBEER]

I was making a Cooper's English bitter kit last night. I had planned on following the directions with the kit and not messing with it much. Just wanted an easy no fuss batch to keep the pipeline flowing.

So the directions called for the addition of the kit and 500g of light DME. I added 500g of pale LME and 250g of malto dextrin because I wanted to see if it would help with the body.

The kit didn't have an expected OG but it only came out to 1029. Hmmm pretty low for most of the beers I have made. I ended up adding about 500g of dextrose just to get the gravity up to 1040.

Should I have added the dextrose or should I have left it alone at 1029? What is done is done now but I was curious what you guys would have done?

 

[bce22]

If you did a partial boil I would have left it alone, since it is almost impossible to get an accurate reading due to the wort not being mixed consistently throughout. Its very very likely that the sample you took for the reading was "watered down"" showing you a lower OG than what you really have in your fermenter.

 

[glockentalk]

There are lots of tasty fermentables you can add to boost the og. You can try molasses and brown sugar, for example.