cdsearcher

Recipes 

Hello All,

I am new to the forum and I have been reading as much as I could find here, but like all newbies I guess I need some reassurance....so....

I am trying to recreate (as close as possible of course) my (current) favourite stout, Coopers Best Extra. I bought the Coopers home brewing kit along with a can of the Stout extract. After advice from my lhbs guy, I ditched the Coopers Brew Enchancer 1 for 3lbs of Muntons Plain Amber DME. Along with the DME he also recommended Papazian's JOHB book, which I have read (well most of it - more the beginners sections).

I boiled the Stout extract with 1 gallon of water for 20mins (picked too small of a pot to include the DME, duh!). I then added the hot water/extract mixture to the plastic fermenter and poured in the DME. I had to stir pretty briskly for 10min to get all the DME to dissolve. I then poured in more spring water for a total of 5 gallons of water used (to the 20.5L mark on the fermenter). I let the mixture cool and then pitched the (Coopers supplied)yeast. After an hour, noticeable gas in the air-lock, bubbling well after 7hrs. The kraeusen did blow the water out of the air-lock and I attached a hose to let the foam have a controlled way to expel. At 25hrs, I could not resist quickly opening the fermenter and removing most of the remaining foam with a santizied spoon (not touching the liquid or inside of the fermenter).

My question (of course) is about knowing when fermentation is complete.

The OG was 1.066

FG after 32hrs - 1.024
FG after 100hrs - 1.023
FG after 124hrs - 1.021 still very very slightly bubbling?

How low should I expect the FG to go?

Has fermentation become "stuck" (sure did drop off quickly)?

How long can I leave the beer in the fermenter?;
JOHB states no more than 10days (beacuse the yeast begins to breakdown and cause off flavours). But some comments here seem to say leave it alone for a few weeks (I don't have a secondary fermenter to rack into).

Do you think that I had aerated the wort enough?

I hope this was not too longer or have too (basic) many questions

Cheers - Peter

Munsoned

Recipes 

Welcome!

The simple response: fermentation is "done" when your gravity doesn't change over multiple readings (usually ~3 days is safe). If it sticks at 1.020 for 3 days, for example, it's generally considered to be done. If it moves down to 1.019 or less, repeat the process.

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