Low hydrometer readings.

[everythingsucks]

I did a homebrew recently and my final hydrometer readings after fermentation were below 1.000, wtf?

When i was brewing it i forgot to add the sugar to the hot water and added it to a 23L full fermenter and ended up with 24L and i figured the sugar hadn't dissolved properly. I'm only new to homebrewing so i guess it was a pretty stupid thing to do looking back but now the more that i think about it the more i wish i hadn't thrown out the whole batch. I think i should have taken hydrometer readings throughout the brew also then i would have been able to tell if it was a normal reading for the batch or not.

Anyways what are your ideas?

[slothrob]

Can you tell us the recipe? That would help. For instance, what do you mean by sugar?

It's possible to ferment to less than 1.000, but that would require a recipe with a lot of simple sugar and a very attenuative yeast. Often, yeasts that are as attenuative as what you describe are wild yeasts from the air. Not sanitizing your equipment or not boiling ingredients that go into a beer to sterilize them are common ways to introduce wild yeast.

That said, many people do get away with adding sugar directly to a fermentor without introducing any contamination, but it's risky behavior.