Missed OG?

Northern Brewer General
1

I brewed a NB Rum Runner Stout tonight (1-gallon), and missed heavily on the original gravity at 1.101. I had figured it to be around 1.070. I pitched a Safale-04 yeast that was in the kit.

So my questions are:

  1. In order to bring it down to your ideal OG, do you just add water?
  2. Do you check the original gravity before you cool the wort? I only ask this because if you don’t have distilled water, could you contaminate the beer by just adding filtered water?
  3. Will the yeast survive and will I get beer?

Any help is appreciated.

2
  1. yes. You can add water to get you O.G down if it is too high. You can continue to boil if your OG is too low or add DME.
  2. Your wort should be 60 degrees to get an accurate OG reading if using a hydrometer. I purchased a temperature compensating refractometer and check the wort during the boil until I hit my mark. I am not afraid to add water from my home tap. I had also use bought spring water and never had a problem. I just topped off my last batch using my carbon filter and am concerned about bacteria. I had to do this because I failed to boil a gallon or two for make up like I usually do. I posted about this in a thread in the fermentation section of this forum.
  3. Yep you will have beer. I just finished a keg that the OG was to be 1.065, mine was 1.030 and it was drinkable. :cheers:
3

Provided you got your volumes right and followed the direction, you didn’t miss your OG. I calculate you should have an OG of 1.088 for that recipe (2 lbs DME at 44ppg in a 1 gallon batch). You might get another point or 2 from the steeping grains.

NB tells you to start with 1.25 gallon because they expect you to boil off .25 gallons. If you didn’t boil off quite enough, I wouldn’t sweat it, your OG will be slightly low but you’ll have beer. If you boiled off too much, its totally okay (and standard practice) to top up with water to the final volume in the fermenter. Use either fresh bottled water, or tap water that has been dechlorinated, boiled, and cooled.