On Sunday before the Super Bowl I brewed an extract batch of IPA with a buddy. It's a 5.5 gallon batch with one half pound of Crystal 40 and 8# light DME. I put the recipe into ProMash and it said the OG should be 1.064. My hydrometer said it was 1.068. The refractometer gave me a reading of 15.5. I got the Excel spreadsheet from MoreBeer says this is an OG of 1.063. None of these are hugely different, I think, but this is what I'm having a hard time with. I did make a starter, 1.3 liters on a stir plate with WLP001. But today I checked it, 3 days later and I got a refractometer reading of 8.0. I plugged this in the MoreBeer spreadsheet and it says my gravity is now 1.013. This seems to be very low, very quickly to me. BUT, I have very little experience making starters, this is only the second batch I have made one for.
Don't get me wrong, if the reading are correct, that's great. But the beer still seems to be actively fermenting. Lots of airlock activity and is really "churning". I didn't take enough of a sample out to check with the hydrometer.
Any opinions??????????
