Low OG reading

[Paul1]

Just done the Coopers Real Ale kit. Added 1kg Brew Enhancer 2, 500g medium spray malt, mixed in ~4litres of hot water. Topped up to 22.5litres and pitched yeast @24degC.

Surprised that the OG reading was as low as 1.027? Adopted basically same methodology as previous kits, which come in at ~1.040 (other than a recent stout)

Any thoughts?

Cheers Paul

 

[evanvine]

Did you put the Kit in?
You will get 1027 just from what you've added.

 

[Paul1]

yep - kit in first, followed by hot water, then the brewing sugars, and finally the cold water (after stirring it all together)

 

[mcc111]

Two possible reasons - the temperature was quite different to that to which your hydrometer was originally calibrated (test it by putting it in water and marking the reading and use one of the calculators on this site to readjust using the temp of your wort). The other possible reason is that you did not stir the ingredients well enough. All the fermentables should be added with the hot water first and stirred wildly before adding the cold water. You might find that a lot of the ingredients stayed at the bottom of the FV.

 

[Paul1]

Thanks for the advice. Really helpful tip for the hydrometer - will look into that. I stirred all the ingredients in for about 10 minutes, so am sure that everything was dissolved.