Forgot to take SG

[cain]

Hi…first time brewing beer.

I forgot to take the starting gravity when I started my batch yesterday.

Can anyone give me a general guess as to what the starting gravity would be,so I can get a rough idea of alcohol percentage of my final product, or is that impossible?

Thanks for your input…I’ll try to remember next time, I was so obsessed with cleanliness I wasn’t really thinking about anything but getting the pail closed up as soon as I could…oops.

5 gallon batch

6 lbs light LME
.5 lb carafoam
.25 lb light munich
.25 lb crystal 20

60 minute boil

nottingham yeast

[65ss427]

Looks like your OG should be around 1.044 or so, assuming a finished volume of 5 gallons. Good luck with your first batch, and welcome to the forums. :cheers:

[rebuiltcellars]

Hi, welcome to a great hobby!

If you put 5 gallons into the fermentor, your OG should be around 1.048 with that recipe, plus or minus about 5 points (1.043 - 1.053) depending on how accurate you were measuring volume at the end and how much sugar you might have thrown out along with the hops. If you put in 5.5 gallons so you would end up with an even 5 gallons of beer when all is done, it will be around 1.044 like 65SS427 stated.

[dmtaylo2]

Welcome to the hobby! It can quickly become an obsession!

Assuming everything turned out pretty normal and that you hit pretty close to 5.0 gallons, your original gravity should have been 1.048.

Nottingham ale yeast is a good choice and consistently ferments about 77% attenuation, so your final gravity should be close to 1.011.

This will put your alcohol level at about (1.048 - 1.011) * 130 = 4.8% ABV.

Another shorthand way to figure out your percent alcohol is to just look at the last two digits of the original gravity, i.e., 1.048, that’s 48 gravity units and 4.8% ABV. This estimate comes pretty close within about 0.3% for most beers, i.e., close enough.

[cain]

Thank you for the information!!!