Brewed a batch of Dry Irish Stout last night, extract kit. After soaking the grains and boiling the syrup, my SG was only 1.022. Just got the Hydrometer, so never checked before, Is this a little Low???
It is low for a stout. Couple of things. Did you calibrate your hydrometer? Put water in the test tube and it should read 1.000 at 60 degrees Fahrenheit. If it is off you just have to make adjustments. Also, make a record of what temperature you took your hydrometer reading. If the wort is over 60 F the gravity will be low. There are online calculators that will help you.
Did you do a partial boil and then add top up water? If so, I’d bet your false reading is due to incomplete mixing. The wort is heavier than the water and sinks to the bottom if your fermenter, so when you take a reading you get mainly the lighter water on top. It’s really difficult to get it mixed thoroughly, even if you think you did. When you make an extract beer, if you use all the ingredients and hit the final correctly, you pretty much have to get the OG predicted.
The temp was around 70, but the incomplete mixing sounds right … I figured with the extract kit, not a lot could go wrong. As a point of interest, what is the flavour / quality difference between the extract kit and the grain kit for the same brew??
What a coincidence, I am brewing an extract version of my own stout this afternoon. I have only brewed my stout using all grain so this will be an adventure for me. As of quality/flavor of AG versus extract? If both were done efficiently there should be very little difference. With all grain you just have a better control over if you are going for a complex taste. There isn’t much complexity in a basic dry stout so your extract should be very similar to an all grain version, if not pretty much the same.
Denny also has a great point so +1 to him.
70 is a little warm but would only displace the SG by like 0.001-0.002.
