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marvec

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Hey all. Im very new to this game called homebrewing. I've had friends with the mr beer home brewing kits and i've always wanted one. So last thursday i went to the closest beer and wine brewing store and bought myself all the needed stuffs for a beginner. The guy there recommended using festa brew as im a first timer, and i know its kinda a cop-out but i agreed. So its supposed to be really easy. Sanitize the bucket, rinse, add the wort from the incredibly unwieldy bag and add the yeast. At least this is what the guy said. I followed the directions that came with the kit and boiled a cup of water and was supposed to wait til it cooled and then add the yeast to it. I let it sit and poured the wort into the bucket and instinctively added the yeast to the water i was letting sit, only to realize it hadnt cooled much so i grabbed it and poured cold water into it to cool it down. I added the yeast slurry to wort and covered it with plastic wrap and wrapped a rubber band around the bucket top. The guy said it was a real simple way to keep an eye on the fermentation and if you pulled a little bit out from the rubber band it acted as a one way valve as the plastic wrap would close in on itself whenever gas wasnt escaping. so i did this and waited, and waited, i had no idea when i was supposed to see bubbles, but five hours later that night figured i must have killed the yeast cause there was nothing going on. The next morning still nothing. so i went to the store after work and got more yeast and when i came home found that amazingly it was bubbling right along. of course i second guessed myself and figured i must have killed a lot of yeast for it to take that long to start so i added more yeast, only like a quarter of the new packet, and stirred, which i found to be another mistake as i cleaned my kitchen and came back to find a plastic wrap bubble of doom bursting with heady foam, so i smushed down the bubble and and collected the foam in a pan and put it in the sink. and then it just started bubblin nice and quick and very steady. next day same thing, and that night(saturday night) it was still going nice. Coming home sunday night there were no bubbles bubbling and it was just sitting there, so after coming home tonight(monday night) there was a few patches of just bubbles that had been there in the morning, and none of them were popping and the wort wasn't churning or anything. so i added the rest of my yeast and it started bubbling and i was like cool we are good, i also put the heat in my apmt back up to 74 which is the temp when it was bubbling like mad, i only turned it down to 72 when i went home on saturday. but about 30 minutes later back to nothing. so now i look at my floating hydrometer and i have a reading of 1.020, the kit says anywhere from 1.019 to 1.004 is good to move to a secondary, although i dont plan on using a secondary. i was just going to wait for it to clear a bit and then move it over to a secondary and just add my sugar and bottle. But i dont know what to do about the fact that my fermentation seemed to stop. im gonna let it sit for until at least wednesday to see if the hydrometer level changes, before i do anything, considering i totally forgot to write down my initial hydrometer reading, although it was above 1.050. I just cant believe that its done fermenting in like 3 and a half days. Its a double oatmeal stout by the way. Any comments, questions, or advice or anything is welcome, even if its just to reprimand me for being dumb. THANKS!
 
That's gotta be the longest paragraph I've ever seen!
A beer should be practically finished before moving to secondary. 1020 is a little high for a 1050 beer.
I'd also be a little doubtful of advice from anywhere giving a range of 1004 to 1019 to move to secondary without qualification. If I had a beer at 1004 it'd go straight down the drain.
Some one may have a little advice for you but I'm afraid I'm too lazy to read that paragraph. It's not easy to pick out the relevant info. Sorry.

Oh and welcome.
 
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