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Let it go as long as it needs to, and airlock activity does not equal it is done. Good luck and welcome to the obsession. 
wallyLOZ
Well-Known Member
Welcome from Missouri!
Patience is key now. It's the toughest thing to do, but will pay dividends in the end. If you ask how long to leave in the fermenter, you'll get plenty of opinions, none of them wrong. I routinely leave mine for three weeks. IMO it allows the yeast to clean up off flavors, byproducts, and time to clear.
Good luck and keep us posted on your progress. Cheers!
Patience is key now. It's the toughest thing to do, but will pay dividends in the end. If you ask how long to leave in the fermenter, you'll get plenty of opinions, none of them wrong. I routinely leave mine for three weeks. IMO it allows the yeast to clean up off flavors, byproducts, and time to clear.
Good luck and keep us posted on your progress. Cheers!
There are also different opinions about sampling during fermentation - probably none of those are wrong either. I minimize opening of the fermenter. I don't open it until three days before bottling day to take a gravity sample. Then another gravity sample on bottling day to make sure the gravity is stable. And, like wallyLOZ, I leave it in the fermenter for three weeks (except for the rare times when gravity isn't stable).
Note: I bottle condition all my beers. If I kegged, I probably wouldn't be so fussy about the gravity being stable.
Note: I bottle condition all my beers. If I kegged, I probably wouldn't be so fussy about the gravity being stable.
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Nice pic! Looks like you have some good advice so far, so I'll point out something a little different. I don't think it's more important than what others are saying here. Just another bit of advice to consider as you prepare for next steps.
Do a dry/wet run of as much of your bottling process as possible. You obviously can't practice on the fermenting vessel you're using but if you have a second set of similar equipment then set it up, use some water, and run through the process.
Get a feel for how your spigot or racking cane works. If you're using a spigot then how will you sanitize it first before attaching tubing? Will sanitized/wet tubing grip the sanitized/wet spigot well? If you're using a racking cane then do you have a clip to clip it to the fermentor or will you need an extra set of hands to hold it out of the yeast cake on the bottom? Is your racking cane long enough to reach the bottom of the fermentor? Is your tubing long enough to reach from there to your bottles?
Get used to the bottling wand. Does the end of the wand stick open sometimes when filling bottles? What do you do in that case? (You can tap it on the bottom of the bottle to reset that little stopper. If you get the movement right you can minimize it happening in the first place, though.) Can you get it to the right fill level consistently? Can you move quickly from bottle to bottle? Will you cap each bottle after filling it or fill them all and then cap? If you are filling them all before capping then can you lay out the bottles and work in a pattern where you aren't hovering over open bottles (with or without beer in them)? Can you work the capper smoothly and efficiently? If nothing else then please don't let the first bottle you cap be full of beer.
It's always better to test new methods on something other than your beer. It's also good to test them with something less sticky than beer in case you make a mess
Every single time I have messed up something in my process it's because I tried something new and didn't pilot it first. Thankfully, I have only ruined one beer this way but it was 100% because I didn't test out a new piece of equipment. Bottling/kegging is the last step and if something does go way wrong then you can undo all of the work you did to make a tasty beer.
All that said...you shouldn't stress about it too much, of course! Have fun and know that you will make mistakes and that those mistakes are learning opportunities. The more you think about things in advance the less surprises there will be on bottling day, though.
Cheers and welcome!
Do a dry/wet run of as much of your bottling process as possible. You obviously can't practice on the fermenting vessel you're using but if you have a second set of similar equipment then set it up, use some water, and run through the process.
Get a feel for how your spigot or racking cane works. If you're using a spigot then how will you sanitize it first before attaching tubing? Will sanitized/wet tubing grip the sanitized/wet spigot well? If you're using a racking cane then do you have a clip to clip it to the fermentor or will you need an extra set of hands to hold it out of the yeast cake on the bottom? Is your racking cane long enough to reach the bottom of the fermentor? Is your tubing long enough to reach from there to your bottles?
Get used to the bottling wand. Does the end of the wand stick open sometimes when filling bottles? What do you do in that case? (You can tap it on the bottom of the bottle to reset that little stopper. If you get the movement right you can minimize it happening in the first place, though.) Can you get it to the right fill level consistently? Can you move quickly from bottle to bottle? Will you cap each bottle after filling it or fill them all and then cap? If you are filling them all before capping then can you lay out the bottles and work in a pattern where you aren't hovering over open bottles (with or without beer in them)? Can you work the capper smoothly and efficiently? If nothing else then please don't let the first bottle you cap be full of beer.
It's always better to test new methods on something other than your beer. It's also good to test them with something less sticky than beer in case you make a mess
Every single time I have messed up something in my process it's because I tried something new and didn't pilot it first. Thankfully, I have only ruined one beer this way but it was 100% because I didn't test out a new piece of equipment. Bottling/kegging is the last step and if something does go way wrong then you can undo all of the work you did to make a tasty beer.All that said...you shouldn't stress about it too much, of course! Have fun and know that you will make mistakes and that those mistakes are learning opportunities. The more you think about things in advance the less surprises there will be on bottling day, though.
Cheers and welcome!
