My first brew concern..

My amber ale yeast beer has been in primary since 1/3, starting was 1.045, a reading at 1/13 was 1.022, today's reading (1/18) was 1.020. I moved to a secondary because I'm aiming for a clear beer, wife likes clear beer. Should I be concerned with the slowness of the reading? Or just chill and see what happens in a week?

i am an amateur

A lot of extract brews get stuck at around 1.020.

Do be patient, maybe warm it up a bit, but it may never drop further.

scrapes said:

My amber ale yeast beer has been in primary since 1/3, starting was 1.045, a reading at 1/13 was 1.022, today's reading (1/18) was 1.020. I moved to a secondary because I'm aiming for a clear beer, wife likes clear beer. Should I be concerned with the slowness of the reading? Or just chill and see what happens in a week?

i am an amateur

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The fact that it moved from .022 to .020 means it is still fermenting and IMO you should not have racked it yet as by removing it from the yeast cake you may have slowed progress even more if not stopped it all together. Ideally you should not remove the beer from the yeast until you have reached FG and verified it is stable meaning it remains unchanged for a couple days.

That being said, there is still yeast in suspension and it may continue to drop but as Homebrewdad said many extract recipes finish at 1.020.

Just so you know as well, if you leave the beer in primary for a couple weeks after FG and even cold crash the vessel for a few days you will still get clear beer without going to secondary

First off you should have left it in the primary until the gravity readings stable off. You lost two points to drop to 1.020 and should have waited another three days to take another reading. If that was at 1.020 then you could rack if you want but if it were still dropping you should leave it. Secondary fermentation is really a bad description because fermentation should actually be done before racking if you do it at all. It's more of a secondary storage vessel for aging, flavoring and/or clearing.

It's not a bad thing though. You'll be fine. If you think it's still fermenting a bit let it go a week, then chill a week and then bottle.

ok ok ok....summarily punished. Above facts noted. Impatient?? perhaps. So I can't ignore the science and purely go by the directions? huh, who'da thunk it.

as a follow up, the air lock is bubbling like a champ again.

No worries about it after you get the hang of it you'll be skipping the secondary all together. I leave mine in the primary and when its done bubbling I leave in there for another week or two or three depending on the brew and yeast. Too lazy to take readings lol. I rack to from the primary to my bottling bucket even if I'm kegging. Reason being if I accidentally pick up some trub when siphoning I'll let the beer sit in the bucket with the lid on overnight then transfer to my keg. Basically my bucket becomes my secondary if I ever need to clear further.