Hello, I was concerned about this batch of ale. My OG was a little off target at 1.054, target of 1.070. Worried, I took a sample this morning and it was 1.022. It still has almost two weeks to go in the primary carboy. Will it drop considerably more? Thats my hope of about 8.5% ABV. The yeast is doing its job but not generating as much 'bubbles' in the blow off tube. Leo
Leo, your beer is at day 3 of fermentation and the SG will drop some more over the next few days. With an OG of 1.054 your beer will not achieve 8.5% ABV. Once you have a final gravity reading you can utilize that value along with the OG value of 1.054 to estimate the ABV using online tools (see below). For the sake of discussion lets assume you reach a final gravity of 1.012. That beer would be 5.5% ABV. http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/ Cheers!
Leo, As Jack mentioned above, you are not going to achieve an ABV anywhere near 8.5% with a 1.054 OG, even assuming high attenuation. You mentioned your beer being a "little off target" but it's really off target. You need to figure out why, IMO more than worrying about the abv level of this batch. If you describe your recipe and process in more detail many of us here will be glad to chime in
A good rule of thumb to estimate the final ABV for just about any beer is to delete the 1.0 from the original gravity and insert the decimal point in between. For example, a wort with original gravity 1.054 will probably give you approximately 5.4% ABV, and a 1.070 beer would give you approximately 7.0% ABV. This assumes "average" yeast with average apparent attenuation of about 75%. So if you wanted 8.5% ABV, you probably should have been shooting for 1.085 unless using a saison yeast or some other experimental critter. What yeast did you use? And why are you measuring gravity at 72 hours anyway? Most beers need a full week to get a good idea how things are coming along, or at least 4-5 days. Leave it alone!?
Thanks for the replies. I had a kit from NB. I've made this batch twice before with a great RI. 21.5 and19.5 OG. (I end up using one of the Brix to SG converters) I borrowed a refractometer from our chemistry lab. This is a Pliny the Elder clone recipe. Both times before it came out great; about 4 total weeks. I'm at work and not sure of the yeast strain. I do think I held on to this kit too long. It took me about 2 months to finally get it going and in that time it went through some temperature changes. I'm sure this effected the yeast and other ingredients.
Is this an extract kit or all grain kit? It should not be hard to be in the ball park with OG if it's extract. If it is extract, you need to take a hard look at your process and measurements.
