Forgot to take hydrometer reading

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Brewed an IPA last night and forgot to take a hydrometer reading at the end. I took one this morning, about 11 hours later and the reading is a little lower than what Hopville predicted it would have been. Does anybody have any sort of idea the amount of fermentation that would have occurred in this short a time. The projected reading was 1.074. My actual reading now is 1.061.

I’m not an experienced homebrewer, but if the fermentation started, the wort is now partially carbonated, and that factor as well changes the SG; so I would not even be sure that 1.061 is correct...

Haha, yeah I’d dump the batch and start over.

Seriously though, don’t worry about it. My gut says that it would be hard for a beer to drop 13 gravity points in just 11 hours, but it’s definitely possible. Especially if you pitched a large healthy starter. Also warmer temps would kick start fermentation quicker. A lot of factors can influence the pace of fermentation so there’s really no way of knowing for sure. The bottom line is, not knowing the OG of the beer will not effect the quality of the brew.

Originally posted by HornyDevil
You’re fucked.

Call it 1.065 and don’t worry about it too much :) You were probably lower than the estimate to begin with.

At this point, the yeast are mostly reproducing, not really actively fermenting. To fiulijn’s point, they’ll consume some sugar to do this, but they’re not releasing a lot of CO2 just yet. Carbonation does’t change the gravity so much as nucleation sites on the hydrometer itself might cause bubbles which will artificially float the hydrometer. In any case, you should learn/expect to degas samples you take post-pitch.

Originally posted by joeneugs


Haha, yeah I’d dump the batch and start over.

Seriously though, don’t worry about it. My gut says that it would be hard for a beer to drop 13 gravity points in just 11 hours, but it’s definitely possible. Especially if you pitched a large healthy starter. Also warmer temps would kick start fermentation quicker. A lot of factors can influence the pace of fermentation so there’s really no way of knowing for sure. The bottom line is, not knowing the OG of the beer will not effect the quality of the brew.

Originally posted by HornyDevil
You’re fucked.

Thanks for the info, everyone.

You could do reverse readings by taking the yeast attenuation % and doing some quick math. I believe you could just multiply the FG by the attenuation % and it will give you a rough OG.

Say that it is whatever you expected it to be and don’t worry. Nobody will try to prove you wrong

Originally posted by Christian
Say that it is whatever you expected it to be and don’t worry. Nobody will try to prove you wrong

Unless you live in Ontario: I just learned that every imported beer has to be analyzed in a lab and ABV recalculated

Originally posted by fiulijn

Originally posted by Christian
Say that it is whatever you expected it to be and don’t worry. Nobody will try to prove you wrong

Unless you live in Ontario: I just learned that every imported beer has to be analyzed in a lab and ABV recalculated

Yup - welcome to bureaucracy-land.

Originally posted by JoeMcPhee

Originally posted by fiulijn

Originally posted by Christian
Say that it is whatever you expected it to be and don’t worry. Nobody will try to prove you wrong

Unless you live in Ontario: I just learned that every imported beer has to be analyzed in a lab and ABV recalculated

Yup - welcome to bureaucracy-land.

Is Ontario is checking a bottle of every imported beer to verify and recalculate the ABV?

you should just give up brewing if you forgot to do a reading. My best beer that I ever made is one that I forgot to do an OG on.