Beer Forum

Relative newcomer to brewing (I dabbled a bit a while back, but nothing good). Followed JZ's american wheat (extract) a week ago. Admittedly I didn't take a OG reading, was lazy and figured it'd be relatively close to the one listed in the book. Last night, a week later, the gravity was right at 1.030, which is about halfway between his listed OG and FG. Considering that the foam is nearly gone and all of that by this point, I would have figured it to be much closer to the FG. Is this about what I should have expected, or is it way high?

I've been trying to keep the ferment temps around his specified 65F, I have one of those stick-on thermometer things, but the granularity isn't so good (IIRC in that range it goes 62-66-70) but it probably has been hanging out in the 63-66F range the entire time.

Is this all worry over nothing or is it not moving along like it should be?

jgbeer wrote:Relative newcomer to brewing (I dabbled a bit a while back, but nothing good). Followed JZ's american wheat (extract) a week ago. Admittedly I didn't take a OG reading, was lazy and figured it'd be relatively close to the one listed in the book. Last night, a week later, the gravity was right at 1.030, which is about halfway between his listed OG and FG. Considering that the foam is nearly gone and all of that by this point, I would have figured it to be much closer to the FG. Is this about what I should have expected, or is it way high?

I've been trying to keep the ferment temps around his specified 65F, I have one of those stick-on thermometer things, but the granularity isn't so good (IIRC in that range it goes 62-66-70) but it probably has been hanging out in the 63-66F range the entire time.

Is this all worry over nothing or is it not moving along like it should be?

I think that you should be moving in the right direction. If you aerated properly and pitched the right amount of yeast, you should be close to your FG. The only way to really know is to take a sample however. I got a cheap 3 piece plastic wine thief from my LHBS and i sanitize that for taking samples. Granted I don't do it often enough, but it works really well.
If you haven't gotten to your FG, warm up the carboy a few degrees and agitate the yeast so that they get back into the wort and get more active.
But you are probably doing just fine.

Cheers!