hi
you guys gave me lots of good advice about a hoegaarden clone I was making.
I thought i'd cocked it up because after a couple of weeks in the barrel it tasted pretty awful. it also had a reading of only about 2 percent alcohol. I had to go away for a three weeks so didn't get chance to empty the barrel. On my return, just before clearing out the failure i decided to give it another taste. It poured like hoegaarden, looked like it and even tasted like it except for having too much coriander and orange flavour. Ho hum i thought after i'd downed a glass, pity it won't get me drunk., but i actually felt a bit tipsy? How can this be? it still said 2 percent alcohol on the reading which i did at 20c.
I just couldn't understand it. In an effort to get to the bottom of the problem i decided open a bottle of speckled hen i had to see what the reading was and would you believe it gave a reading of 2 percent. Which means my hoegaarden was a success!!
The trouble is i'm doing something disastrously wrong on the hydrometer. either that or the darn thing doesn't work?
Any way the beer does have a bit too much orange and coriander in it, so i would say to anyone trying hoegaarden that while wheelers quantities might be too low (Curacao Peel 3g Ground Coriander 3g) i also think the amounts recommended here were too high (1 g for every litre). i'm going to do my next with halfway between.
apart from that it tastes better everyday and considering a 75cl bottle of hoegaarden costs £3.20 in my supermarket my my 15 quid brew (with fancy liquid yeast ) is working out quite good
what am i doing wrong hydrometer wise?
hoegaarden and hydrometer chaos
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Vossy1
...if it's 2, it's stuffed 
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PGSteamer
You need to take an Original Gravity reading (one before fermentation) and one after to determine your ABV.
http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixA.html
http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixA.html
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delboy
Agree with the comments above it sounds like you aren't doing the calculations correctly, im assuming that the 2 % you quote is a final reading of approx 1014.
If the starting gravity of the wort was 1040 it would be 40 minus 14 divided by 7.45 = approx 3.5 %
If it was 1050 it would 50 minus 14 divided by 7.45 = approx 4.8 % etc.
If the starting gravity of the wort was 1040 it would be 40 minus 14 divided by 7.45 = approx 3.5 %
If it was 1050 it would 50 minus 14 divided by 7.45 = approx 4.8 % etc.
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anomalous_result
It does seem you're calculating it incorrectly as you can't open a can of commercial beer and work out the abv using a hydrometer. You take an initial reading at the start of the brew and a final one at the end to see the difference in specific gravity (density) of the liquid, the difference will tell you how much sugar has been converted to alcohol.
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slim34
can i just ask why wouldn't the hydrometer give the potential alcohol content of a beer? forgive the stupid question but surely gravity is gravity?
does the viscosity of the liquid affect the gravity? are they the same thing? i just don't understand the physics behind the whole hydrometer thing.
i remember my dad telling me as a boy that people would sometimes come from the brewery, to our friends pub, pretending to be customers. They would order a drink and pop something into the beer, that would sink to a certain level, to test the alchohol content. depending on how high or low the item settled would determine if the landlord was watering down his beer. Was that bullshit.
does the viscosity of the liquid affect the gravity? are they the same thing? i just don't understand the physics behind the whole hydrometer thing.
i remember my dad telling me as a boy that people would sometimes come from the brewery, to our friends pub, pretending to be customers. They would order a drink and pop something into the beer, that would sink to a certain level, to test the alchohol content. depending on how high or low the item settled would determine if the landlord was watering down his beer. Was that bullshit.
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anomalous_result
What you're measuring is the gravity yes, but that doesn't tell you how much alcohol is in the liquid.
To reiterate, you take a gravity reading at the start of the brew. This tells you the gravity before anything's happened and you have a sugary mix for the yeast to go at. You then take a reading at the end and note that now the gravity is less than it was before. This is because the dissolved sugar has been converted into alcohol, resulting in a less dense loquid. So just putting a hydrometer in a pint of beer will just tell you the gravity, not how much sugar has been converted into alcohol. To know the abv you will therefore need to know the gravity originally, the Original Gravity. Using the two values and the calculation detailed by delboy will tell you how much alcohol is in there.
As far as I can remember viscosity is only a bit related to density, think it has more to do with surface tension and intermolecular bond strength or summat.
To reiterate, you take a gravity reading at the start of the brew. This tells you the gravity before anything's happened and you have a sugary mix for the yeast to go at. You then take a reading at the end and note that now the gravity is less than it was before. This is because the dissolved sugar has been converted into alcohol, resulting in a less dense loquid. So just putting a hydrometer in a pint of beer will just tell you the gravity, not how much sugar has been converted into alcohol. To know the abv you will therefore need to know the gravity originally, the Original Gravity. Using the two values and the calculation detailed by delboy will tell you how much alcohol is in there.
As far as I can remember viscosity is only a bit related to density, think it has more to do with surface tension and intermolecular bond strength or summat.
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delboy
Edit: for the purposes of the explaination on hydrometer use,slim34 wrote:can i just ask why wouldn't the hydrometer give the potential alcohol content of a beer? forgive the stupid question but surely gravity is gravity?
does the viscosity of the liquid affect the gravity? are they the same thing? i just don't understand the physics behind the whole hydrometer thing.
i remember my dad telling me as a boy that people would sometimes come from the brewery, to our friends pub, pretending to be customers. They would order a drink and pop something into the beer, that would sink to a certain level, to test the alchohol content. depending on how high or low the item settled would determine if the landlord was watering down his beer. Was that bullshit.
Viscosity and gravity are essentially the same thing, the hydrometer measures the viscosity of the liquid it is placed in, the sugars in solution change the viscosity or gravity of the liquid the more sugars the more viscous and therefore the hydrometer sits higher in the trial jar.
When using hydrometer readings to measure alcohol content you take the orginal gravity reading before the yeast has fermented any of the sugars, then again when fermentation has stopped to measure the final gravity.
The differnece in gravity/viscosity tells you how much sugar has been converted to alcohol (alcohol has a very similar viscosity/gravity to water).
Without a starting gravity there is no way of working out the alcohol content ie the amount of sugar converted to alcohol.
The inspector may have been using a different device that was confused with a hydrometer.
Hope i haven't just confused you more
Last edited by delboy on Fri Sep 21, 2007 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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steve_flack
Not necessarily as the brewery would know what the gravity of the finished beer should be. If it was being watered down the gravity would be lower than that the brewery would expect.slim34 wrote: i remember my dad telling me as a boy that people would sometimes come from the brewery, to our friends pub, pretending to be customers. They would order a drink and pop something into the beer, that would sink to a certain level, to test the alchohol content. depending on how high or low the item settled would determine if the landlord was watering down his beer. Was that bullshit.
As the others have said, the finishing gravity of a beer tells you very little about how much alcohol is in it. Some very dry beers have very low final gravities (1.004 - 1.008) yet can be high in alcohol.
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anomalous_result
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delboy
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slim34
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anomalous_result
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David Edge