I Think I've Killed My First Batch

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BlackHat

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My other thread here <https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=41629> seems to have died. I had an extremely quick bubbling phase in my airlock and no apparent activity since.

I checked the gravity 4 days after it stopped bubbling, which is 5 days since I sealed it into the primary fermenter. The OG was 1.035 and I got a reading of 1.0159. I told my reading to a fellow brewer who has much more experience than I do, and he thought that seemed pretty slow and that I should try racking to a secondary. So I did that last night and tonight I did another gravity check and got 1.015. There's no krausen or really anything going on - it's actually pretty clear.

It's been 6 days since I sealed it and I'm worried that I've killed my beer. Should I add more yeast or is this normal? Will adding more yeast affect the flavor? Did I rack too soon?

Sorry for the multiple questions, but this is my first batch and I want to learn as much from it as I can.

:confused:
 
Your beer is done. The FG is a little high, but stable. All my extract batches were a little high on the FG. What was the recipe? BTW, can you really read your hydrometer out to 3 decimal places?
 
clayof2day said:
BTW, can you really read your hydrometer out to 3 decimal places?

Exactly what I was thinking. I took an FG reading today on a batch and couldn't help but think that there must be a better way to take the last reading.
 
The brew is a Breakfast Stout kit from Northern Brewer, which tastes pretty good from what I had of the hydrometer sample.

clayof2day said:
BTW, can you really read your hydrometer out to 3 decimal places?

:) Out to 3 decimal places? Yeah, my hydrometer is pretty precise and I pretty much use a test tube so it's not hard for me to see what is read. Now, to get to the 4th decimal, 1.0159, I added the temperature coefficient according to JJ Palmer's book How To Brew. So math is to blame there.

Thanks for your help!
 
uselesslogic said:
I told my reading to a fellow brewer who has much more experience than I do, and he thought that seemed pretty slow and that I should try racking to a secondary.
:confused:


This slightly confuses me. If you were not yet at your final gravity the last thing you would want to do would be to remove the beer from the yeast. The secondary is a clearing tank to allow more yeast to drop out of solution. Next time you are slightly high on your FG I would just wait it out a few more days and take another reading.
 
Your beer is fine! It's just about done, that's all. Don't worry. The beer knows what to do. Leave it in the clearing tank for a week or two, then check the gravity again and bottle.

Next time, leave it in primary for the whole week or longer. I usually leave mine in primary about 10 days, then check the gravity. You won't hurt it leaving it on the yeast longer, and it's actually beneficial.
 
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