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tigerdentist

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So my first brew, nut brown ale, has been in the primary for almost two weeks. I have taken the gravity reading three days in a row. I have 1.012 for the reading. I sampled it, and it actually tastes like beer! I was thinking of transferring to the secondary for another two weeks. Is this beneficial for this style of beer? How much "clearing" can I expect with the secondary? The SWMBO would be much happier with a "clearer" beer. My hydrometer didn't have any kind of chart to figure out the ABV. If I started with 1.054 and finished at 1.012 what am I looking at in terms of ABV? Thanks for all the help and tips with this first batch.
 
With those hydro readings, you're coming in right around 5.6%ABV. If you did want to get just a little clearer of a beer, you can transfer over to the secondary for a little while. I don't think you'll need it in there for much more than a week tops though. This will just help ensure that you don't pull up too much trub from the bottom of the primary if you bottle straight from there. You should enjoy the Nut Brown.. Hopefully the SWMBO does too!
 
i think your looking at about 5.5% ABV. I would let it set for another week in the primary, but that's just personal preference. If you want to go to a secondary, you can but you don't really have to. I know of people that use gelatin finings to clear their beer up. You dissolve it into water over heat, being careful not to let it boil or it will lose the properties needed to clear up the beer. You can add that to your beer when you got to your secondary after you let it cool down to room temp. Personally I wouldn't add anything to it. Having a clear beer is just aesthetic. It will taste no different.
 
Remember: The Google knows all.

For reference, if you want to calculate the ABV, open google.com and enter the following:
(OG - FG) * 131
Hit enter and google will tell you the ABV. For the numbers you gave, I entered:
(1.054 - 1.012) * 131 and got back:
(1.05400 - 1.01200) * 131 = 5.50200


As an aside, there seem to be around 42 different formulas for ABV, and they all come out within a few 1/10ths of a percent of each other. This is probably why what I posted differs from rsmith179's answer by 0.1%.
 
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