New brewer with an issue on 2nd batch, Help!

K so hi everyone, new to brewing just finished second batch on Friday evening. I decided to make a maple porter, here the recipe.

Ingredients:

5.5 lbs*Light Dry Malt Extract
1.5 lbs Crystal Malt (60 degrees lovibond)
1/2 lbs Black Patent Malt*
1/2 lbs Chocolate malt
64 oz*Grade B*Maple Syrup
2.5 oz Styrian Golding Hop Pellets

hops schedule is 1oz 60 min.
1oz 30min.
.5 oz 15

maple addEd at 5min.

K so I ended up calculating OG at 1.057 and figured maple might bump it up to about 1.070 but i was way off, finished at 1.098! Anyways since I hadent planned for this I only bought one packet dry safale us-05 and pitched it solo. Fermentation took off at about 10 hr. So not bad, my questions are what should I be looking for on a finished FG reading? Also since this will be a higher alcohol beer how long should I let it sit in the secondary for until bottling?? Also how long for bottle conditioning. Will this be a drinkable beer just by looking at the recipe and the OG?? Any advice on things to expect?

I'd give this one lots of time - maybe 3-4 weeks in the primary, even if the gravity has stabilized. I would also be patient in the secondary as well - maybe another 3-4 weeks. And, then again in the bottles.

Also, take some tastings along the way (after the first few weeks) so you can be familiar with how the taste is changing/mellowing over time - and how quickly. This will also help determine when its time to bottle.

Agreed with all the points above. Once you start drinking them, definitely reserve a few bottles, maybe a 6 pack - and drink one every 6 months. You'll see how the beer changes over time. This one will probably age well.

When brewing with extract, it's very hard to miss your gravity ready unless you haven't properly measured your water. Was this supposed to be a 5 gal batch? How much liquid went into your fermenter? Give us a run down of your brewing process and we can help you out a little more for next time.

So brewing this one was interesting, I figured for boil off I needed about 6.3 gal of water for a full five gallon, I decided I'd take a gallon off of the volume to leave for cold water to drop the temp a little quicker. So I started the boil at 5.3 gal, steeped grains and added hops ect.. Anyways since my first batch was in the kitchen, the wide complained of the smell an I was forced into the garage. I decided that since I had a side burner for my BBQ grill I'd use that for the boil. A little bit of a mistake cause I couldn't get up to the boil temp I was about 2 degrees f away from boiling after about an hour waiting. Decided to go ahead with it anyways at that temp an I think it'll be alright. So I ended the boil at about 4.5 gal and added some cold water to bring it to exactly 5 gallons.

You're wife kicked you out?? That sucks! I guess I am lucky and have a very understanding wife.

One of the best investments I did was buy a turkey fryer burner. Great Christmas gift and relatively inexpensive. Boilin' and drinkin' in the great outdoors.

Yeah I got a burner on order pick it up this Friday! Quick question though on the secondary, just read this post on secondary racking. http://blogs.homebrewtalk.com/Boerderij_Kabouter/Secondary_fermentation_and_why_it_makes_me_crazy/ So I've been told to wait the primary out for a few weeks and then rack to secondary for Like 3 weeks, but this post says otherwise what's the real deal? If I follow this post I should rack to secondary in about 2 days.