AHS Belhaven Wee Heavy Clone

Greetings Homebrewlings.

I've been sitting on this AHS Belhaven Wee Heavy Clone kit since August of 07 which is bad in and of itself. I burnt through 4 vials of White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale yeast only to kill the starters each time and postpone my brew day. So finally, last Saturday, I got down to it, made a viable starter (I wasn't feeding the buggers enough) and made my brew.

This batch took somewhere between 18 and 24 hours to start the magic due to a temperature issue (basement got to cold, moved the batch to a cosy 2nd floor closet and had foam the next morning). It's had a nice bit of yeast foam at the water line about 2 inches thick which has started to recede. I have to hit my local supply shop to get a new hydrometer since I broke the old one in the sanitizing bucket. The whole time, I have yet to see my air lock dance though which makes me think I have an air leak in my carboy cap.

This is all leading to these questions:
1 - After I verify the gravity, do I transfer the brew to secondary, bottle condition or let it sit in primary?
2- How can I tell for certain if I do have an air leak which could ruin my beer.
It should be mentioned that the brew closet has not attained a beer/wort-ish smell.

Thanks guys and happy brewing.

AE

We at HBT should be ashamed of ourselves for not responding more promptly.

For the benefit of future searchers, let me say that I find your ability to kill yeast amazing. I wonder what you meant when you said you weren't feeding them enough in the starters. Maybe reproduction/fermentation happened so fast that you missed it- afterall, you were pitching 5 gallons worth of yeast into a small starter, right?

Give it at least 2 weeks in primary- it won't hurt anything. If you rack if off after 4 or 5 weeks or so, there's no need for a secondary, although the beer will get better with age and there's less temptation if it's in primary as opposed to bottle-carbed and ready to drink.

As for the leak, unless you let it sit in primary forever, I wouldn't worry about infection. After all, during fermentation, there should be positive pressure in the carboy due to the CO2 being produced.

Sorry I didn't get to your questions sooner!

So... how'd the beer turn out?