Beer Forum

I brewed my first beer today, an extract kit from More Beer. It is the Frank Ellis "Kicked-Up" American Pale Ale with an OG of 1.071. I followed everything to the 'T' and when I tested, my OG was 1.058. It started fermenting withing 8 hours so it's moving, but I want to figure out what factors influence this initial OG as the varience is too large. I used a partial boil but I hit my temps as noted in the instructions.

What might I have done that would make me come up this short on the OG.

Is there anything I could do at this point in the process to raise this like add something? Sugar?

Mahalo

Was your wort temperature around 130F when you tested your gravity?

Nope, it was under 80 as I did it after racking to the carboy and adding the top-off water, so I am guessing mid 70's at the most.

Then I'm stumped unless your volumes were off, or the recipe of the kit was off... it'll just be more bitter than you planned with the lower gravity.

You could boil up a pint of water and dissolve some regular table sugar and add that to the fermenter. 1/2 lb will raise the OG about 4 points. I don't think I would add more than 3/4 lb, but 3/4 lb would raise it 6 points. i think i would add somewhere between 1/2-3/4 lbs and live with the slightly low OG. and since it was an extract brew, the table sugar might crisp it up a little. a little table sugar could be a good thing. catch a set for me bro.

straight cash homey wrote:You could boil up a pint of water and dissolve some regular table sugar and add that to the fermenter. 1/2 lb will raise the OG about 4 points. I don't think I would add more than 3/4 lb, but 3/4 lb would raise it 6 points. i think i would add somewhere between 1/2-3/4 lbs and live with the slightly low OG. and since it was an extract brew, the table sugar might crisp it up a little. a little table sugar could be a good thing. catch a set for me bro.

i agree...i would boil up some sugar water...maybe around day 3 pour it into your fermenter...let the yeast work on the more complex sugars before adding the easy stuff....

You might also want to test your hydrometer. It may be off... not your gravity.

Your top off water and your wort may not have mixed well enough and the heavier wort sank more to the bottom, so you could have pulled off a more diluted sample from the top, which would have a lower gravity.
You also could have put too much top off water in your fermenter which is easy to do if you are not using a marked vessel.
You could throw some sugar in there if you wanted, but 1.058 is still a respectable OG for a pale ale, so you could just let it ride and see how it turns out.
Best of luck
Cheers!