First beer - Fall seems too soon

I wanted to start with something really easy, a Festa Brew Cream Ale kit, but all I could find in town was a RJ Spagnol's Brew House Cream Ale. My first batch is mainly just to see if my cleanliness and sanitization is up to par.

The kit calls for 8 liters of water into the primary followed by the 15 liter pre-made wort. These kits come with their pH reduced by phosphoric acid, to lengthen shelflife. And you must neutralize it by adding the supplied packet of baking soda to the water, before you add the wort.

I am using a semi-transparent 35 liter plastic primary, with a pretty tight sealing lid, drilled with a hole and a plastic airlock in a bung. Pouring the wort into the water made quite a lot of foam. I sprinkled the dry yeast right onto this foam, evenly, as I did not want to leave it exposed to the air for long by waiting for the foam to subside so I could put the yeast on the liquid surface. Not sure if that was correct.

The fermentation did not really begin for about four hours afterwards, which seems slower than a wine kit. It then proceeded vigorously for about 24 hours, with many bubbles per second in the airlock. The krausen rose to about two inches from the surface. It never reached the lid. It then subsided. For about a day it was doing two bubbles per minute and now, after two days, it is about a bubble per minute or less, and the foam is completely gone.

Does this seem too quick for you guys?

The temperature is only about 20C/70F in that room. Although I do have it wrapped in a blanket against the light. The kit calls for racking into the secondary between 3 and 5 days, after the krausen has fallen. I guess I should at least leave it for the 3.

With paranoid thanks.
--
Rod

Everything with the fermentation sounds like it is right on track. As far as racking to the secondary wait the three days. RDWHAHB

That's on the fast side for a ferment. As long as it didn't get too hot (it probably ran 3-4C hotter than the room), no problem.

Some of the best beers I made, have fermented with-in two days.

hi rod - cool name

OK, the paranoia is over and I bottled this batch yesterday. The beer did not really clear that much in the secondary, although there was about a quarter inch of trub at the bottom.
The final gravity was 1.010, before I added the priming sugar. After adding the sugar, it had risen back above 1.020.

I tasted it, and although flat, was very good tasting. Nothing that I would describe as an off-flavour. In fact it was similar, but better, than the can of Kilkenny I was drinking. Now I am getting impatient to try it for real.

After the bottling procedure, I can see how doing the keg thing could be quite appealing. At least I got myself a stand-up bench capper, rather than the hand held. It was hard to judge how much force to put into capping. Some of the caps have a little indentation in them now, which probably means I used too much effort.