No activity after 3 days

I have a somewhat common question. I put my beer in my primary 5 days ago. 3 days of those 5 activity was AMAZING! Now I am not seeing any activity, should I open it up and take a gravity, or leave it? I am okay with leaving it for a few more days if not a week because I am still working on my beer fridge... I am going to move it to a secondary glass bottle next.
Thanks.
Dan

Mod Edit: please use a descriptive thread title.

leave it for two weeks from brew day before doing anything. if it's finished, you can transfer to secondary after a week, but i wouldn't recommend it.

no matter what, never bottle before 3 weeks after brew day.

Yeah, the first few days of fermentation are crazy. The good thing is you know you have good fermentation. It slows down after that, but fermentation is still happening. This is why airlock activity is not the indicator of when to transfer to a secondary (or to bottle). A fast rule of thumb is 1-2-3. 1 week in the primary, 2 weeks in the secondary, 3 weeks in the bottle.

But, this is just a general guideline. Many brewers condition their ales for much longer.

Well, I still have my first two batches sitting in primaries as we speak. My first batch which is an Amber Wheat is sort of see through when I shine a flash light through the neck (I'm using a plastic carboy). I was keeping a very keen eye on it the first week, and began to worry my batch lost its carbonation as well. Upon shining the light through the neck I seen I was way wrong. Even though my air lock wasn't going crazy the brew looked almost like a freshly pored coke when looking through the neck (all the bubbles coming up)

Today is officially day #24 of my amber wheat and I still see a few bubbles going on in there. So long story short go with the 3 week minimum to bottle as recommended by... Ummm ... everyone...lol. Just because you don't see the air lock bubbling doesn't mean the magic is gone.....

yes the longer the better in primary

:rockin:

Sounds good, just a FYI I am not going to bottle I am going to keg, should this make a difference... I am going to wait until I get my next batch in the mail, should be sometime next week and then transfer to the secondary... That would be like 10 or so days in the primary... I assume you can't over primary a beer?

if anything, it should condition longer before putting in the keg IF you immediately drink it after kegging.

conditioning time can happen anywhere: primary, secondary, bottle, keg. just so long as it happens.

i would still wait at least three weeks before kegging anything.

underwaterdan said:

That would be like 10 or so days in the primary... I assume you can't over primary a beer?

Click to expand...

Of course you can, but it is highly unlikely you'll keep it in primary longer than a month or so.
Kept in primary too long will subject your brew to autolysis, which is canabilization of the yeast cells. This can produce off flavours not unlike that of burnt rubber. The thing to remember is, however, that autolysis is really rare, as most homebrew is drank long before this would become a factor.

i just had an RIS that spent almost 4 months in the primary and tastes fantastic. autolysis my ass

Airlock activity depends on yeast strain so it's only a variable indicator
Apparenty Autolysis is very rare in HB. Usually a week in the fermenter is too short, there is really no need to rack to a secondary unless you want to yeast harvest or fiddle with the brew in some way.
I usually give my brews 10-14 days primary and ideally minimum of 6 weeks in the bottle. Others will argue differently but the fact is that for a "standard" brew all the work is done in that time. For some brews more time is required.
More importantly check the final gravity, if it doesn't move for 3 days running then it has finished or is stalled. At 11 days it's unlikely to be stalled.