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If brewing all-grain, taking gravity readings after mashing allows you to calculate your mash efficiency. If your efficiency is low (meaning you're not getting good conversion), you can use this knowledge to pin down problems in your recipe, milling, and mash/sparge processes. Measuring the gravity before and after fermentation allows you to calculate the ...

Yes. Specific gravity is calculated on relative densities (densitybeer / densitywater in the case of brewing). If you double the volume of the beer as you describe by diluting it with water, then the density will be half (roughly, not accounting for intermolecular interactions). (Dbeer / 2)/ Dwater = (Dbeer / Dwater) /2, so multiplying by 2 would restore the ...

I have brewed many batches where I never checked the gravity in the past. You don't really need to check the gravities to make great beer. You do run the risk of not knowing when a beer is complete and maybe having overcarbonation issues in the bottle. But good fermentation practices should, normally, take care of that. However, I think that when you get ...

You can use a wine or beer thief and a test jar to grab a sample from your carboy. I use the following one and it works great: http://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-Wine-Beer-Thief/dp/B00186ADYS This one is nice because the hydrometer fits right inside it so you don't need a test jar. I never put the sample back in, just scared of contamination. Does anybody ...

Assuming you are using the hydrometer right: It could be your efficiency in the steep. If that is the case you are working at 64% efficiency instead of 72% like the recipe says. ( 70 GU * 0.72 efficiency / 78 GU = 64.6% ) Rinse the grain bag with hot water around 170º. That will get more sugar out of the grain. How much wort did you get? If you ended ...

It's hard to get a low original gravity when brewing from an extract kit. As long as you added all the malt extract and sugar provided with the kit, and you added the correct amount of water, there's really no way for the starting gravity to be low. I can think of two possible reasons that your OG was lower than expected: you added more water than ...

Your final gravity will be influenced by a number of things. The typical attenuation range of the yeast is just one aspect. How thick/thin and warm your mash is (or the overall fermentability of your LME or DME) will play a significant roll. Fermentation temperature and aeration of the wort before pitching will also be significant. As JackSmith stated, the ...

The yeast strains usually come with an apparent attenuation range, not an exact value. For instance, something like 70-75%, 67-70%, etc. I always hope to hit the lower end of that range. For example, if I start at 1.050 and use a yeast with 73-80% apparent attenuation, I expect to end up in the range of 1.010 - 1.014. Sometimes I go a point or two lower ...

My understanding of "synonymous" is that it means "equivalent to". Therefore clearly no, "dry" is not equivalent to "low FG" which is not equivalent to "drinkable". However, they may well be related since low FG correlates with light body which can aid in drinkability. Similarly, if you like dry beer then you'll find it drinkable. And why exclude ...

In my own experience, "dry" and "low FG" are completely unrelated. This surprised me at first, but there are a lot of other factors besides FG that determine the 'dryness' of the beer. Right off the bat, the amount of hop bitterness counterbalances the sweetness. Likewise, any astringent character from the mineral qualities of the water will start chipping ...

The words may get frequently overloaded, but they actually all mean different things. I'll attempt to explain below. Dry(ness) -- Tends to refer to the amount of detectable sweetness in the final beverage. A beer that is hardly sweet would be considered dry. A dry beer could be correlated to Low FG, as little sugar would remain in the beer to taste. Low FG ...

1.044 Final Gravity?!?! You have a severe danger of bottle bombs! For future reference, you should dissolve your sugar in some boiling water, then pour that into the bucket, then rack the beer on top of the sugar water. That ensures equal distribution. I'm afraid you are going to have problems with this batch. Probably, a lot of the bottles will be ...

You should always test FG before adding your priming sugar. You can use a sanitized wine thief or turkey baster to pull samples from a carboy. You'll get a better mixture if you gently pour the simple syrup into the bottom of the bottling bucket, and then rack the beer into that. The flow of the beer will mix it thoroughly, and will not introduce ...

Unfortunately, not all extracts are created the same. I think what you are seeing is that your extract is not as fermentable as the extract created by say Wyeast to give you their range of attenuation. You can easily email Wyeast or WhiteLabs to ask them about the conditions used to get the attentuation ranges. The are generally very helpful with that sort ...

it could be inefficient mashing in your minimash. Do you sparge it at all? ie when you're removing the grain bag pour a little water through the grain to try to get the remaining sugar out. It could also be you're measuring your gravity at the incorrect temperature that your hydrometer is calibrated to. Some hydrometers are calibrated to measure accurately ...

I had a saison that finished at 1.002 that was fermented with Wyeast 3711 French Saison at about 84F. The attenuation rate of the yeast strain along with the use of fully fermentable sugars can bring your final gravity quite low. Your mash temperature will also dictate how fermentable your wort will be, a lower beta amalyes rest will produce more simple ...

Typically with a kit if you used the proper amounts of water/sugar/extract ratio your OG will be right on. Incomplete mixing of the wort doesn't seem like a problem considering you shook the fermenter well. In this video at 25:25 Owen Lingley from Wyeast Laboratories says that only 45 seconds vigorously shaking a carboy will oxoginate the wort to acceptable ...

Some elements in the chocolate are dispersed throughout the beer, so it does affect the FG in principle, but not by any appreciable amount. 8oz in 5 gallons would be much less than 1 gravity point. It could be a stuck ferment, or that your FG realy is 1.022 due to unfermentables. Try rousing the yeast a little and raising the temperature by 5F/2C which may ...

I have restarted a ferment this way, but you need to warm it up first, then resuspend the yeast. Doing in reverse just has yeast back in a suspension of cool wort/beer and they settle back out. That said a 1.021 extract batch, with no starter and the hopping rate of a SN Celebration Clone makes me suspect that its about as done as its going to be. I'd ...

This actually happened to me too this past weekend. I took the last bit from the secondary and had a gravity of 1.030 or so and was disheartened to see such. Then I thought that maybe since I took from the bottom there was too much trub augmenting the reading. So I popped open one of my bottles and measured it. It was 1.01! Much better. So the moral is ...

I agree with the "leave it alone" advice. Between the extract and the dark grains, you had a fair amount of unfermentables in there which is likely what's responsible. BTW, I see you pitched at 75F. Your beer will probably turn out much better of you'd get the temp down another 10F before pitching.

I would not mess around with it. Looking at the recipe I don't think you would expect to much more of a gravity change. Normally I advocate leaving any beer in primary for 14 days. And then a beer with this starting gravity would defenitaly be fine for 14 days. Your recipe has a fair amount of darker specialty grains in it and that will contribute to the ...