TejasBrewing

Recipes 

I brewed my first all grain biab which the OG was 1.047 so I pitched one packet of safeale 05 dry right on top of the cooled wort (76f). It started fermington in about 5 hours and went slow in the airlock unlike my last brews. It has been 9 days and beer has cleared out pretty but the airlock is still bubbling a bit. Should I pitch more yeast to get this finished up?

Reno_eNVy

Recipes 

It's been said all over these forums: your airlock is not a good sign of fermentation.

Fermentation really only takes about a day or two for average OG beers. The rest is yeast clean-up and resultant off-gasing of CO2. CO2 can also be released if you move the fermentation vessel, if the beer raises temperature (gas stays better in cold solutions), and sometimes just because it wants to.

The airlock is a jerk and licks all of your clean dishes while you're not looking.

The absolute only true way of knowing if your fermentation is complete is to take a gravity reading.

__________________
Primary: Sahti, Strawberry Banana Blonde, Caramel Quad

Kegged: Cascadian Dark Ale -- Punkin' Ale -- "Bitter and Rye" American-style Bitter

Bottled: English Barleywine (brewed 9/26/09 -- bottled 5/5/10)

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PLAY FOR GLORY, THE GLORY LA!

johnp

Recipes 

Personally I would just leave it be until 2 SG readings at 3 days apart are the same. I leave them alone for at least 3 weeks and the normal gravity beers are always done.

*edit: Reno beat me

BradleyBrew

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Slightly off topic but I use to LOVE US-05 but after a few sluggish fermentation I have looked elsewhere. I would wait and do some consecutive gravity readings.

bleme

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I prefer low and slow. I hate using a mop on my ceiling.

TejasBrewing

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So when you guys are taking gravity readings are you dumping your sample back in? Im using a 6.5 gal ferm and ended up with right at 5 gal so not sure if I can reach it with turkey baster to pull a sample off

johnp

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Either way is fine

Chesterbelloc

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Two of the funniest quotes I have seen thus far!

kh54s10

Recipes 

I never return a sample to the fermenter. Too big a risk of infecting the beer.
I use a refractometer to confirm fermentation has ended. (very small samples) When I have a reason to think that it might not be finished. Then I use a hydrometer to get an accurate FG.

ChessRockwell

Recipes 

Agreed, that's why I love US-05. No out of control furious fermentation to heat things up too much, no explosions on the ceiling, it just chugs away, sometimes slowly, but it always gets the job done. I have no temperature control but the ambient 68 in my house so it works great for me. I even used it on a mead, it's at 11.8%abv after 7 weeks and still plugging along, with a tiny bubble every 15 seconds or so.