Is primary fermentation done?

First time brewing, using an American amber ale ingredients kit. The recipe said that the final gravity should be 1.016. I've measured it 3 times in the past week and each time got the exact same reading: 1.022. The airlock is still bubbling--very slowly. (The first couple days of primary it was bubbling like mad.) It's been going in primary fermentation for 2 weeks now.

Should I move it on to secondary fermentation? Should I keep waiting to see if the FG will lower any more? I've been measuring using a sacharometer--which I'm pretty sure that I'm using correctly.

What's a sacharometer? I'm not familiar with that.

If it's not moving, it sounds like it's stuck. You don't want to transfer if it's not finished. 1.022 is too high to be finished in an amber generally.

Leave it in the primary for 4 weeks, skip the secondary. At about 3 weeks in or so start taking readings again. Also agree with Yooper, this will be way too sweet.

A saccharometer is just a hydrometer that is used to measure sugar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrometer#Saccharometer)

So the advice is just to leave it as is and hope that I get a different reading in another week or 2? If it's still bubbling, why is the gravity reading not changing?

BPRbeer said:

A saccharometer is just a hydrometer that is used to measure sugar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrometer#Saccharometer)

So the advice is just to leave it as is and hope that I get a different reading in another week or 2? If it's still bubbling, why is the gravity reading not changing?

Click to expand...

Ah, thanks for giving me a new word! I appreciate the info.

Well, about the airlock bubbling- it's tough to say. Airlock bubbling can happen during fermentation. That's common. But it also happens during weather changes- like a warmer temperature or even a change in barometric pressure. A warmer temperature will often cause lots of bubbling in the airlock, even if fermentation is finished. I'm not sure why the barometric pressure changes make it bubble, though.

I hope that it drops at least another .004. What was your recipe? Maybe you had a bit of unfermentables.

The changes is pressure often push the gas out of solution, also the changes in temp do the same by changing density.