Low OG?

Mau5

Just finished brewing a batch of beer, It used a lager strain of yeast so I'm keeping it at about 13C to ferment then i'll move it out to the shed for a cold conditioning.

Added a kg of spraymalt, 500g Body Bru and 250g of brown sugar to the wort in an attempt to boost alcohol.
Brewed it the normal Kit way, filled it up to the 5gallon mark with cold water and all that.

One Things confusing me though, OG was only 1.041...
Should it be higher? Temp was 16C when I took SG using a 20C hydrometer so I did the adjustments and that.
The Last batch I brewed, I used less sugar/malt and got a higher OG.

Any ideas? will it ferment to a lower FG? Hoping for about 5% ABV as all my other brews have been pretty low (about 3.9%)

Cheers

thelynchfella

Mau5 wrote: »

Just finished brewing a batch of beer, It used a lager strain of yeast so I'm keeping it at about 13C to ferment then i'll move it out to the shed for a cold conditioning.

Added a kg of spraymalt, 500g Body Bru and 250g of brown sugar to the wort in an attempt to boost alcohol.
Brewed it the normal Kit way, filled it up to the 5gallon mark with cold water and all that.

One Things confusing me though, OG was only 1.041...
Should it be higher? Temp was 16C when I took SG using a 20C hydrometer so I did the adjustments and that.
The Last batch I brewed, I used less sugar/malt and got a higher OG.

Any ideas? will it ferment to a lower FG? Hoping for about 5% ABV as all my other brews have been pretty low (about 3.9%)

Cheers

Your beer will probably be lucky to hit 4% before bottling....are you sure your hydrometer is working correct? 1.041 seems pretty low to me for the amount of sugar u added....I'm no expert, its just my opinion.

guildofevil

That is indeed rather low. What beer kit was it? How much wort did you make?

Assuming it is a standard 23 litres and that the beer kit was basically 1.5kg of liquid malt extract, I would have expected an OG of 1.048.

Mau5

guildofevil wrote: »

That is indeed rather low. What beer kit was it? How much wort did you make?

Assuming it is a standard 23 litres and that the beer kit was basically 1.5kg of liquid malt extract, I would have expected an OG of 1.048.

Yes standard 23 litres, used a Coopers European Lager 1.7kg...
Could be a wrong hydrometer reading but I dont think so,
Ill take another reading in a bit to double check it.

Got an OG of 1.048 on my last brew which was the same weight kit with the same ingredients but without the brown sugar.

thelynchfella

i'd check the hydrometer in water. You should get a reading of about 1....if not, i reckon the hydrometers broken

noby

Did the malt extract dissolve fully? Sometimes you can be left with a sticky lump at the bottom, and a low SG.

oblivious

noby wrote: »

Did the malt extract dissolve fully? Sometimes you can be left with a sticky lump at the bottom, and a low SG.

Good point