pabloj13

Recipes 

How do you know fermentation took off again?

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Kegged Two Hearted, Dragonmead Final Absolution
Bottled Robust porter, Founder's Breakfast Stout, Ommegawd Hellepin, Ed Wort's Apfelwein
RIP Snake Dog IPA, Biermuncher's OktoberFAST, Falconer's Flight IPA, Two-Hearted clone (Culturing Bell's Yeast), Noberon wheat, Skeeter Pee using dry yeast, Smooth Oatmeal Stout

Simple and easy wort aeration - Harvest yeast from your blowoff - Homebrew Spicy Mustard

ploppythesausage

Recipes 

Because its fizzing and bubbling like a fizzy bubbly thing, I get a faceful of CO2 when I take a peak and the hydro reading is coming down ever so slightly.

pabloj13

Recipes 

Just keep in mind that adding things will provide nucleation sites for co2 to bubble out of solution. The gravity dropping sounds good though.

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Kegged Two Hearted, Dragonmead Final Absolution
Bottled Robust porter, Founder's Breakfast Stout, Ommegawd Hellepin, Ed Wort's Apfelwein
RIP Snake Dog IPA, Biermuncher's OktoberFAST, Falconer's Flight IPA, Two-Hearted clone (Culturing Bell's Yeast), Noberon wheat, Skeeter Pee using dry yeast, Smooth Oatmeal Stout

Simple and easy wort aeration - Harvest yeast from your blowoff - Homebrew Spicy Mustard

hepcat

Recipes 

I brewed a big braggot last month, OG was ~1.098, est. FG was ~1.024 (from recipe calculator I used),but it stopped at ~1.030 and just as you said earlier, it just had a bit more mouth feel and it was a bit more malty sweet than I would have preferred but ended up very drinkable and I liked it alot!

ploppythesausage

Recipes 

It's down to 1.026 now and the temperature has increased due to fermentation of the fruit and extra sugar. I think this rise in temp is helping ferment the wort. We shall see what happens I'll probably give it another week, maybe two before bottling.

Bamsdealer

Recipes 

Be aware too that the gravity dropping may be a result of the few additions of sugar/fruit depending on the amount you added, not additional fermentation of the wort. Sugars are completely fermentable.

kwingert

Recipes 

Like Crazyworld was saying, you may have a lower SG then you think because it is in your fermentor. The CO2 in the beer will hold the hydrometer up. When you take hydrometer reading after starting fermentation, you need to degas it by pour back and forth between two glasses about 10-20 times.

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Beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy-Franklin

ploppythesausage

Recipes 

Thanks kwingert that makes sense. I ended up bottling at 1.022 - it is very good. A bit cloying at the moment but when carbonated it should have a nice thick mouthfeel. The raspeberries and cherries at a very slight tartness. If this turns out well i'll never be able to get it right again, but oh well, i'm not one to make the same recipe twice anyway

ploppythesausage

Recipes 

Thanks kwingert that makes sense. I ended up bottling at 1.022 - it is very good. A bit cloying at the moment but when carbonated it should have a nice thick mouthfeel. The raspeberries and cherries at a very slight tartness. If this turns out well i'll never be able to get it right again, but oh well, i'm not one to make the same recipe twice anyway

Braufessor

Recipes 

Some thoughts for your next brew -

I think you would be a lot better off just ignoring your beer for 2-3 weeks. Our job is to crush grains, mash grains, boil, cool, make sure we have made a good starter, or used adequate amounts of yeast, and provide a good temperature range for fermentation.

If we do all of that, the yeast will do their job perfectly, 99% of the time. In fact, yeast almost never screw up their part of the deal(unlike us - myself included And, on the extraordinarily rare occassion where the yeast don't do what they are supposed to - there is not a whole heck of a lot you are going to do to fix it, other than dump in a pack of dry yeast.

6 days is WAAYYYY too early to be declaring something is wrong with your fermentation (unless it just never started). If you pitch your yeast and there is a good steady fermentation, just leave it alone. Don't take gravity readings, don't taste it, just let the yeast do their job. Floating a hydrometer in your fermenter for the full time is not a good way to take gravity anyway. All sorts of debris will get clumped onto your hydrometer and you will not get accurate readings. And then, if you are getting faulty readings and doing things to your beer because of it..... you could cause actual problems where there were none. Also, if you are constantly messing with your beer and putting things in and out of it, you are just asking for problems at some point.

My strategy -
*Brew beer
*Chill beer to low 60's (ales)
*Dump in a good, healthy, 1 liter yeast starter
*Put the lid on my bucket
*Keep beer somewhere that is in the low to mid 60's
*Do nothing at all for 3 weeks
*After 3 weeks, plan to bottle/keg
*Draw off a sample just to make sure it is ready, taste, gravity reading (it always is ready).
*Keg/bottle

This is definitely the hardest part of brewing when you get started - patience and leaving your beer alone. The best cure (IMO) is to get a few more fermenters so that you can get a good rotation of brewing, fermenting, bottling/kegging, tasting going - that allows you to ignore the beer that needs to be ignored.

Enjoy - it is a great hobby