Hi, I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village.
In this segment, we're going to talk about
mixing our wort and taking our specific gravity
readings. Now that we've got our wort cooled,
we are going to mix it in with our cold water.
So, we're going to take our lid off, put it
off to the side, take our lid off our cold
wort and start pouring it in. If you've decided
to go with glass as your primary fermenter,
you need to remember one thing: never, ever,
ever pour hot wort directly into an empty
glass. It will shatter your glass immediately
and you'll have a big and painful mess on
your hands. If you're going to do this, make
sure that you've at least filled it up with
halfway with cold water to help absorb the
thermal shock. Now we're going to look at
our water level and see if we need to add
some more water. I need to add a little more,
so I'm going to start pouring in a little
more water. Now, we're going to secure the
top onto the bucket. The beauty of these buckets
is that they seal very, very well. If you
have a glass carboy and you're doing this,
this next step is going to be pretty easy
too. You're just going to want to install
that rubber stopper. Now, as we get here,
we want to kind of aerate the wort. So make
sure that you have your stopper filled at
this point and we're just going to gently
rock it back and forth so you can hear the
splashing inside. That's going to help aerate
it. This is the only step that you want to
aerate your wort on. This is also going to
help mix it up so all the extract mixes with
the water. Now that it's nice and mixed up,
we're going to take a hydrometer reading.
So we are going to use our little thief, which
is also our bottle filler, just stick it in
here, take some of the sample and put it in
our hydrometer which has also been sterilized.
We're going to do this until it is about full
up to here. Now that we have our hydrometer
filled, we can take a look to see how much
sugar there is in here. You're going to look
at the specific gravity which is the one that
starts off at one point zero, zero, zero and
then it has ten, twenty, thirty after that.
And you are going to take your reading from
there. You are going to look for the very
bottom of the meniscus to make your reading.
Whatever your specific gravity measurement
is, write it down in your book and keep it
for later, so we can help figure out what
the alcohol content is. For our Hefeweizen,
we are going to be aiming for a specific gravity
of 1.044 to 1.052. If you didn't quite hit
those numbers, don't worry. You may have added
a little too much or a little too little water.
But it's still going to come out okay. Alright,
we're going to take off our wonderful saran
wrap, take off our lid, and make some beer.
So we'll get that in there, put this off to
the side, securely fasten our lid back on,
and agitate it one last time. And now, we
have a nice beer.
