jbug440
Well-Known Member
So my darling wife bought me a refractometer for Xmas. On Sunday Dec.26 I brewed a Belgian strong ale with my mom who was visiting for the holidays(she was excited to see the process of my new hobby). I didn't know how to use the refractometer so I just took a gravity reading with my hydrometer, O.g. was 1.090. Last week I learned how to use the refractometer, I calibrated it with distilled water and tested it with some wine. Works great!! A straight clear blue line indicated the brix%. I also downloaded the Morebeer excell spreadsheet to convert the fermenting wort brix% into a gravity reading (awesome tool!!). Now my questions. I took a reading yesterday with the refractometer( day #8 in primary). My problem is the reading is blurry and indistinct. It could be a brix of 11 or 12?? The distilled water and wine had a very straight clear line,very accurate to read. Is my blurry problem because my beer is still fermenting? I still see yeast floating to the top and swirling around,its still very cloudy and kinda looks like chocolate milk. I have a blow off tube and am getting 1 bubble every 7 or 8 seconds? If I go with a brix reading of 12 it converts to a gravity of 1.021 so it seems my beer is almost done I think? but why so much activity going on? When this is done fermenting I'm gonna rack it onto some blackberries my kids and I picked this past summer, and secondary for another week or two. Is two weeks too long for secondary? The blackberries are frozen in zip lock bags in my freezer, so I was just gonna simmer them in a pan for about 15-20 minutes to steralize them, then add to secondary. I DO NOT want any seeds getting into my bottles or keg so how should I avoid this? I hope this beer turns out good so I can send some to my mom in Florida.