I'm not used to my beer finishing this quickly... Need some advice. (Pics Included)

[Washington_Brewologist]

Hey guys! So I just got done checking up on the beer I brewed on July 2nd(8 days ago) and have a few questions about my findings. The recipe was the Raging Irish Red Ale recipe gifted to us by user Mysticmead back in 2011. To make sure I wasn't just replicating the same recipe I substituted the 1oz of crystal hops with 1 oz of Hallertau for the first wort addition. And due to the lack of CaraAroma at my LHBS, I had to sub it out with crystal-120. Here's what my brew-day looked like:

Fermentables:
2-Row Pale Malt 9 lbs
Crystal Malt-120 1 lbs
Carapils 8.0 oz
Melanoiden Malt 8.0 oz
Raw Unfiltered Honey 1 lbs @flame out (stirred for 10 minutes)

Hop Additions:
Hallertau 1.00 oz @ First Wort
Cascade 1.00 oz @ 30 minutes left

I live in Bellingham Washington where we have really soft water so I added my usual dose of Calcium Chloride, Epsom salt, gypsum and a dash of baking soda.

Brew Day was a beautiful Washington summer day!

This happened to be the first beer that I used a starter on and thanks to me not checking the little box that reads: Used Stir Plate? (in beersmith) I think I might have made a starter with close to 330 billion cells (2 liter-starter) instead of the 0.95-liter that beersmith suggested. I suppose my first question is:

Is overshooting my pitching rate by this much a bad thing?
Yeast cells that were needed to fully ferment was around 227 and I most likely had over 330 billion.

The yeast definitely didn't seem to mind. 4 hours after pitching I was beginning to see signs of fermentation and by the next day, it was going crazy.

This was the morning after brew-day.

This was taken a few hours later on the same day.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the fermentation going so hard. All of my previous batches(No starters) have taken much longer to start and all have had a much smaller krausen.

I put the beer into its favorite shirt and sat him right next to his buddy who was still fermenting.

My main question has to do with how fast a beer that has had a starter pitched in it (a big one at that) will be done and ready to keg. I took a gravity reading today and one yesterday and both readings suggested the beer had reached its final gravity of 1.010.

If a beer has reached its FG at 8 days into fermentation, is it ready to bottle or keg? What would be the benefit of letting it get closer to the usual 2-weeks that I give my ales?

 

[day_trippr]

A well pitched, temperature-controlled batch can hit the expected final gravity in 4-5 days; happens pretty much every < 80 point brew here.
And if a batch is run warm-ish it can reach terminal gravity even quicker - though perhaps not without some baggage.

We still allow another handful of days for most brews for the yeast to clean up their own first-pass wastes and for dry-hopping as well. Generally I start a cold-crash on day 11 or 12 and then keg two or three days later and start the cold-carbonation process. So, kegged 14 days from pitching.

Some folks shave a few days off that and still make good beer, but one starts messing with some fundamentals in the yeast life cycle much more than that...

Cheers!

 

[Washington_Brewologist]

A well pitched, temperature-controlled batch can hit the expected final gravity in 4-5 days; happens pretty much every < 80 point brew here.
And if a batch is run warm-ish it can reach terminal gravity even quicker - though perhaps not without some baggage.

We still allow another handful of days for most brews for the yeast to clean up their own first-pass wastes and for dry-hopping as well. Generally I start a cold-crash on day 11 or 12 and then keg two or three days later and start the cold-carbonation process. So, kegged 14 days from pitching.

Some folks shave a few days off that and still make good beer, but one starts messing with some fundamentals in the yeast life cycle much more than that...

Cheers!

About cold crashing, do you mean while the wort is still inside of the fermenter? My method up until now has been to just let the fermentation do its thing and then to transfer to the keg. I let it sit in the kegerator for 24 hours before I start pumping in the CO2. Is this essentially doing the same thing as cold crashing in the fermenter or is there something I'm missing?

 

[day_trippr]

Yes, I cold-crash the (primary) fermentor prior to kegging. The idea is to end up with very nearly bright beer in the keg. The two weeks of cold-carbonation will finish the job and literally two ounces in to a fresh tapped keg the beer will run bright and stay that way 'til it kicks...

Cheers!