First brew, high OG, very quick FG

If you did an extract kit and your OG is that far off something is wrong. Either you don't have the volume that the recipe asked for or your measurements are wrong. Regarding the 1.010 reading. Thats good. You want all the fermentation to be done in primary before transferring, so that seems good. The time in secondary will help the beer mellow out and clean up, but the SG shouldn't drop too much if at all in secondary. So stay on the schedule and bottle in a couple weeks.

 

To simplify the process, you can just leave it in primary another week or two.

Also, can you describe your process for measuring the gravity?

 

Do you know what temperature the sample was? That affects the reading but there are calculators online to adjust for that. Bubbles can also affect readings.

One con to a secondary fermentation vessel is the introduction of oxygen during the transfer. That's "why not" enough for me.

 

The temperature correction for gravity readings is a little overstated. These readings are, if I'm correct, set for a standard liquid temperature of 60F. Say your OG was 1.050 at 70F. If you plug those values into a calculator online, it's only going to correct it to, say 1.051 or whatever. Pretty negligible but I still do it just to have the right number.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

Hydrometers have different scales on them. I wonder if you read something else on the measurement. There's not too many beers about there that are going to have an OG of 1.090 except for RIS or the like. You made 5 gallons, I assume.

And, or what it's worth, I've made two beers recently that probably did the bulk of their fermentation before a week was over, and I had temperature control on both of them. One was heated, the other cooled.

 

Temperature and dissolved gas in the sample can skew the hydrometer reading, but I doubt by 40+ gravity points. How did you measure your preboil and postboil volume and how close were they to what the recipe said they should be? If your volumes were low (or you added too much extract) you would have a significantly higher starting gravity than expected.

 

How well did you mix your wort and water prior to taking the reading? Is it possible that the wort and water wasn't totally mixed and that your sample was mainly undiluted / concentrated wort? That makes more sense to me than dissolved gas in solution. After all this was pre-fermentation.... Did you even oxygenate your wort? If so, how?

 

I doubt you got enough dissolved oxygen into the wort via "spoon sloshing" to throw your hydrometer reading off 40+ points, let alone a 1.090 beer fermenting all the way down to 1.010 in a week without proper oxygenation. The latter would have required quite a large yeast pitch to begin with. Probably much larger than your 1.042 beer kit came with. Signs point to the diluted wort not being properly mixed prior to taking the reading.

 

Perhaps next time you should have the cold water in the ale pail and pour your wort into it, rather than putting the wort in the ale pail first and topping off with cold water? I know the way you did it is probably more common since it's an easier way of hitting your target volume without wasting wort, but you'd ensure better mixing if the water was in there first. Or just do it the normal way you did and really shake it up good then give it some time to blend before taking the reading. Good luck!

 

When you say bubbles, do you mean foam? like a head on a beer? if so, you should let that dissipate before reading the hydrometer. You need nice flat beer to get a crisp line.

 

Yea this. If he topped off with water and it wasn't well mixed, then the top (where he drew his sample from) would have the more diluted sugar concentration. That would make his SG reading lower not higher. The water, which has a lower density than wort, wouldn't sink to the bottom.

Since your volume was correct and you only added fermentables via extract, you can rest assured that your OG is very close to the target given by the recipe, if not exactly the same. So for calculations for abv and stuff, you can still use the figures from the recipe and your measured FG.

 

Thou shall aerate! http://monsterbrew.com/Prod_Stainle...JHNVKhBrlc7fAbACo-d_VXxLM2emtrsqs4aApUp8P8HAQ

Just sanitize the spoon with some StarSan before you stir.