Sanity Check Please...

I brewed my first batch which is the NB kit, Caribou Slobber on 9/10 and feel like I did everything pretty cleanly. I am concerned that I may have pitched the yeast too hot. I neglected to take a temp reading before pitching the yeast. The yeast I used was the Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale.

After 12 hours the krausen was 2 inches thick and I was very happy. on the 17 the krausen had receded and the top of the fermenting wort was clean with lots of tiny bubbles. Airlock percolating away.

Today, 10 days later, the airlock is still percolating away at 45 seconds per bubble, the beer is still really cloudy, and there are hundreds of tiny bubbles surfacing. I am quite paranoid about messing with it so I don't want to touch it unless I absolutely need too. I plan to leave in primary for three weeks and then bottle.

I built a fermentation chamber which has kept the primary sitting at 68-70 degrees consistantly.

My sanity question is this.... Am I on the correct path in letting things just sit and not touching it until the absolute last minute I can stand it???

Until otherwise guided, I'll keep working on my bottle collection....

9/12 Krausen


9/20 Bubbles

i usually leave it for three weeks the check the gravity. whats your gravity readings?

Oh and the "ring" of bubbles there seems to match the divot in the better bottle and I'm not really worried about an infection or anything nasty going on.

The OG was slightly higher than the recipe estimated at 1.064. I've not taken a gravity reading since due to not wanting to accidentally mess something up. If it is normal and I monkey around and infect it I would be ticked.

just wait the three and check the grav then youll be fine.

It looks normal to me. And I don't see anything wrong in what you have described.

Thank you guys

Relax and let it do it's thing. Cover it up and forget about it. I just bottled an Oktoberfest that I let sit for four weeks in the primary. Smelled, looked and even tasted (flat and warm) decent. Gonna let the bottles sit for a month. Just remember.... the longer the better.

I did the exact same thing, with the exact same kit lol. Just let it go for a bit, you will be fine.

Billy

We took our first hydrometer check tonight and it is sitting at 1.021 @ 68 degrees. The taste was great! This seems to be the average FG reading from what I have found on the interwebs. Does anyone have any notes on what their FG was for the Caribou Slobber?

We are hoping to have our first batch bottled this weekend!:rockin:

Just be sure to take two readings a few days apart. If they're the same, it's done, but it's ALWAYS best to leave it in primary for a week or two longer than that to let the yeast clean up after themselves and metabolize some of the byproducts of the more agressive fermentation stages. Makes for tastier beer. I think you'll find that waiting almost always improves beer at every step after pitching the yeast.

dprbrts42 said:

We took our first hydrometer check tonight and it is sitting at 1.021 @ 68 degrees.

Click to expand...

Did the kit tell you what the FG should be around?

The kit instructions didn't specify a FG. They have links to the promash analysis however, it didn't specify a FG either. It's been fermenting since 9-10 which means we will be at the three week mark on Saturday.

I plugged the recipe into BeerSmith two and it says OG should be around 1.052 with a final gravity around 1.014. Same thing happened to me on my first beer. Somehow the OG was higher than the estimated OG (I probably boiled off to much and didn't recognize it) and it was suppose to finish out around 1.012 but stopped at 1.020. I might have been impatient. The beer ended up tasting pretty good though. Don't sweat it.