Ginger beer brew balls up concern...

[alextacy]

I used a modified version of this recipe on Sunday to make a finger beer from scratch
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/30492-ginger-beer-recipe-scratch-brew-no-kit/

Now it seemed that all that sugar was going to make a high %abv brew, so I used 500g of dextrose, 500g of dark brown sugar & 500g of honey, rather than a full kg of honey. I used champagne yeast instead of S-05

Followed the boil as per instructions.
Following pitching the yeast OG was only .1020, which was a bit worrying. The original recipe is much higher, even taking into acct the extra half kg of honey.

Taste was powerfully gingery, but not sweet at all. Not undrinkable, but certainly not Bundaberg GB sweet.

With the low OG and lack of sweetness I added an extra 500g of dextrose after pitching & gave it a good stir.
This brought the OG up to .1028 but still low.

Does anyone have thoughts on why the OG is so low, and also, would adding extra dextrose post boil / post pitching yeast cause any problems?

Yeast seems to be working, but slowly. Very small bubbles rising to the surface, have to look hard to see them. Not brewing vigorously like beer kits I have been using.

Keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanks for any advice!

 

[manticle]

The OG is low because you've added far less sugar than the original recipe (around half, presuming your volume was the same as the original recipe). ). You also may have taken a sample that wasn't mixed properly - this can happen easily and give a false reading. If you run those ingredients through a spreadsheet or beer recipe software, you'll get a pretty good representation of what the OG was.

Adding sugar in later is fine - best practice is to boil it up in some water and add it gently in.
Dextrose will ferment out fully and leave no residual sweetness.

Beer ferments with vigorous foam due to protein content in the wort so don't expect the ginger beer to look the same.

 

[alextacy]

Thanks Manticle. My worries are eased!