Can You Save My Beer?

[melinda]

G'day men,
I just took an SG reading and it was 1032. It was supposed to be 1048. I've checked the grain bill and everything is right. I think my water temp must have been a little low. Anyway it doesn't matter now. What can I do, if anything, to get the SG up? I thought of dumping some sugar(out of malt) in. But wont that affect the hop balance? Please help.
Cadbury

 

[melinda]

Sorry forgot to mention. I've just put it in the fermenter.
cadury

 

[user 10246]

You can add some DME/LME to help bring up the Gravity.

 

[thanme]

+1 for adding malt.
It shouldn't affect the hop balance at all.

 

[Pennywise]

I would say if you based your hop calculations on 1048 then it'll be a fair bit more bitter if you didn't add some LDME. So yeah, add LDME

 

[Nick JD]

Knowing why you are off target OG will help you with a couple of things: knowing how not to do it again, and more importantly for this brew - if you have an incomplete conversion resulting in a low OG, or if you left all the sugaz in the grain - different beasties. Starch in beer not so good...