1st all grain batch in 12 years! Ended up good but...

Hey fellas,
So I've returned to brewing after a 12 year break and was at the "intermediate" stage of about 1/2 extract 1/2 grain. Turned out some good, tasty beers with no off flavors, everyone loved them, etc.

Fast forward to last Sunday when the culmination of over a months worth of work building my 10-11 gallon all grain brewing system came to a head when I did my first all grain batch in over 10 years. Felt suuuper good getting back into it - I did a fly sparge (with a poor mans version of a Blichman auto-sparge) and from my calculations my efficiency was around 83ish percent so my copper manifold design and sparge rate (20 lbs in about 1.3 hours) must have been decent.

After waiting a full day, fermentation took off like a rocket. It started bubbling Monday but my concern is that it hasn't slowed substancially and it's Thursday. Am I just being overly concerned? I'm used to having my past brews slow down considerably on day 2-3 and then finish up like normal. The beer smells great from the airlock so I don't think I have any contamination.

Any thoughts you guys have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mikey

Yes, being overly concerned. Welcome back.

Give it time and it will finish just fine.

Every fermentation is different. Sounds pretty normal to me!

Welcome back!

Tom

I have a hard time not brewing for a month, 12 years would have drove me nuts! welcome back

Keep in mind, yeast quality has changed in the last 10 years. What took you a week or more ten years ago will probably take you half that now. Definitely nothing to worry about. Give it the normal 3 to 4 weeks and bottle it up. Welcome back.

Awesome, fellas. Thanks!

Last question - I'm kindof a fan of bottle conditioning rather than doing a secondary for this lighter wheat so there's nothing wrong with me leaving it in primary on the chrub for about 3 weeks total and then going right into the bottles, right?

That's what I do. Secondaries are not needed unless your are adding something to your beer post fermentation (dry hops/fruit/etc).