First time brewing...Nut Brown Ale

Hey All,

Thanks in advance for the help. I have Norther Brewers Nut Brown Ale with specialty grains fermenting in my primary (bucket) fermenter (http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/nut-brown-ale-extract-kit.html). This Friday will be two weeks. I was looking around to see what the Final Gravity should be. I hoping to bottle soon; however, I don't want my precious brew exploding bottles in the basement. Some people have mentioned doing primary for a week and then secondary for another week or two then bottling. I am planning on sticking to just the primary. The airlock was not bubbling much do to me now filling it up enough (I think). After two or three days I peeked inside and it had a nice Krausen head. At this point the Krausen has settled. To summarize, I need helping deciding as to whether or not its time to bottle and let condition. I don't want my first time jitters and impatience to get the best of me. Thanks again for your help.

Is a final gravity given in the instructions? According to brewing classic styles final gravity should be 1.013 to 1.008. I keg, but if I bottled, I would wait until there is no activity at all. If you can take a gravity reading, you want the same gravity for a few days in a row. Otherwise, I'd wait another week to be safe.

Also, read up on how to correctly bottle. Don't trust kit instructions, however, NB is a good store, the instructions from there should be ok.

I did the AG version this past weekend. My OG was 1.059, and the predicted FG should be 1.014. But.... yeast don't read. So, the only really safe way to be sure you are at FG is to serially measure SGs with a hydrometer(or a refractometer). Measure it today, skip a couple days and measure it again. If you're not sure, skip another couple days and measure it again. When you have two SG readings that are the same, then your yeast is done fermenting. Then, give it a couple more days to a week to let the yeast 'cleanup' their byproducts(condition) before moving it. My guess is that after 2 weeks, it's done. But measure to make sure.

Thanks for the help guys. What a great, yet simple method...measure FG for a few days (skip a day or two in between) until the hydrometer readings are the same.