Oh NOOO another secondary question. Kinda

Ok i brewed my first ever batch, an Irish Stout last tuesday and everything went great. I hit the low end with a 1.046 SG. Airlock bubble away for 3 days then stopped on friday. I ignored the batch saturday and the took a reading on sunday and got a 1.014. Checked again today and again 1.014, but was less than 24 hours. According to my math that puts it at 4.2 ABV.

The kit doesnt give a FG, but does say that the ABV should be 4.5 - 5.0. Is this common for the ABV to be off that much? I realize that it isnt alot, but nonetheless it is low. I would like to rack to a secondary and start a new brew cycle in the primary, but i dont want to jump the gun.

Would you rack it or wait?????

Personally, if you need to rack to put a new batch in, I'd go ahead.

I would wait. I like to give my beer a minimum of two weeks on the yeast. There are some things going on that are not necessarily shown by a gravity reading, and it is nice to give the yeast time to clean it up. You can skip secondary altogether at that point if you'd like.

As for your OG --> FG question... You're fine. If it was an extract batch where you topped off with water, you might not have gotten a dead on gravity reading in the first place. Even if it is dead on, it wouldn't take much extra water to push a beer from 4.5 to 4.2 percent. You could just have a bit more volume than you anticipated.

carnevoodoo said:

I would wait. I like to give my beer a minimum of two weeks on the yeast. There are some things going on that are not necessarily shown by a gravity reading, and it is nice to give the yeast time to clean it up. You can skip secondary altogether at that point if you'd like.

As for your OG --> FG question... You're fine. If it was an extract batch where you topped off with water, you might not have gotten a dead on gravity reading in the first place. Even if it is dead on, it wouldn't take much extra water to push a beer from 4.5 to 4.2 percent. You could just have a bit more volume than you anticipated.

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+1

Quality will be improved by leaving your beer on the yeast from a few more days at a minimum.

there are still a lot of yeastys floating around there. I think racking would be fine but let it condition for a few weeks before bottling/kegging. I leave everything 3 weeks in primary but I don't use a secondary.

that said, I don't think the cake of dormant yeast needs to be there for a beer to clean up. There are still millions of yeast in suspension that will be transfered to the secondary that will help with the conditioning process.

goose1873 said:

there are still a lot of yeastys floating around there. I think racking would be fine but let it condition for a few weeks before bottling/kegging. I leave everything 3 weeks in primary but I don't use a secondary.

that said, I don't think the cake of dormant yeast needs to be there for a beer to clean up. There are still millions of yeast in suspension that will be transfered to the secondary that will help with the conditioning process.

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I've personally racked a beer too early that ended up having diacetyl issues, so I don't think that it is impossible for bad things to happen.