Fermentation stopped in 5 days FG 1.008

This is my first time brewing and I am brewing a coopers dark ale. I started on Friday when original gravity was 1.042 which matched the label. On day 1 I saw a lot of activity with constant bubbling in air lock. On Tuesday the bubbling was at every minute. On Wednesday I saw no bubbling. I measured the gravity and it was 1.008 to 1.010. I transferred the wort to secondary fermenter. I am not sure if anything is wrong and not sure how long I should keep in the secondary fermantation. I would appreciate some advice.
The only thing I think I could have done wrong is the wort poured into the primary fermenter was not cool enough when yeast was added.

Sounds like it's done fermenting.

What was your fermentation temperature?

Take another reading in a day or two and if it hasn't changed, you can bottle/keg it... or, better, leave it for another week or three and let the yeast clean it up a bit.

Welcome to HBT! The only thing you did wrong was make beer...hey wait a minute....were you trying to make beer?

Let is sit in the secondary for a couple weeks, bottle it up, wait for three weeks and drink.

Yep, you made beer. Now you're screwed. You're gonna drink it. You'll make more. You'll drink that. Pretty soon you'll have brewing crap strewn all over your house and everything you see at the grocery store, home depot or yard sale will be unconsciously weighed on how it can be used to brew beer.

Next time, think about giving it a little more time in the primary. At least a week after fermentation stops. The yeast clean up their by-products and you can get less off-flavors that way. Either way makes beer though.

In fact, many of us don't move the beer from a primary to a secondary at all.

And I neglected to welcome you in my previous post, so Welcome!

Thanks for all your replies. I don't have a good beer thermometer and my room temperature is somewhere around 80 F.

rrc0406 said:

Thanks for all your replies. I don't have a good beer thermometer and my room temperature is somewhere around 80 F.

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Well, that's pretty hot, that's why it went so fast. The beer will be fine, but you'll get a better tasting beer if you ferment it no higher than about 70 degrees. During the peak of fermentation, it can get up to 8-10 degrees higher inside the fermenter than the ambient air temperature.

You may notice some "hot" flavors as a result, or maybe some fruitiness, but it still should be a drinkable beer!

Thanks, any ideas on reducing the wort temperature? I am in texas where high temperature in summer is inevitable. Winter has the ideal room temperature. Would adding ice to the wort be a good idea?

No, but you can do a number of things. One is to get a small fridge. Cheaper is a swamp cooler set up- with a towel to "wick up" water over the fermenter to use evaporative cooling.

I have an Igloo Ice Cube cooler, that I just made a foam lid for, so the airlock pokes out the top, then I add water and frozen water bottles as needed to keep the temp in the low 60s. There are pictures of this set up in my gallery.

rrc0406 said:

Thanks, any ideas on reducing the wort temperature? I am in texas where high temperature in summer is inevitable. Winter has the ideal room temperature. Would adding ice to the wort be a good idea?

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Search this forum for "Swamp cooler" and "Son of Fermentation Chiller".

I live in SE Texas and use the latter ($30 to build as I had most of the parts handy) and can keep my ales in the upper 60's during fermentation.

Use the swamp cooler, cheapest method by far. Unless you have a bunch of the stuff handy to build a "son of fermentation chamber", it can be fairly expensive ($70-$100) it would be easier to just buy a small fridge or freezer from craigslist and make a fermentation chamber outta that.

Personally I use a similar method to Yooper, I just haven't fashioned a foam insulation lid for it yet, but Ikeep 2 bucket fermenters in a coleman xtreme cooler point a fan at it and place frozen water bottles in it as necessary. BTW I am in southern AZ so I understand the heat issue, especially right now during the monsoon!

Welcome to HBT!