Typical Beginner Question

[medic20]

Alright, my Amber Ale has been in the primary since Sunday evening. I had vigorous airlock bubbling yesterday, Monday, morning lasting all day. I'm now looking at a dramatically slower rate, almost less than one a minute.

I was planning on racking into the secondary on Friday anyway, I guess I'm just looking for some reassurance that this slow down just two days after pitching isn't an issue.

 

[PoppinCaps]

That slow down is good and normal, the yeast have made it most of the way through the sugar.

This may not be in your plan, but I would actually advise not moving the beer off the yeast at day 5, but instead leaving it in the primary for 2-3 weeks and bottling from there. From the advice on here, I started doing that and it has made much smoother more balanced beers for me, likely due to the availability of yeast to finish metabolizing side products of fermentation. Just a thought. Look up the thread on To Secondary or Not. Good insight there.

 

[medic20]

Thanks for the advice. I'm working with a plastic Ale Pale for my primary, so I'm thinking a glass secondary would be a good idea, but what do I know, I'm a noobie. Any insight there would be appreciated as well.

 

[kh54s10]

If you do transfer to secondary, take gravity readings for 3 days. If they stay the same wait another 3-5 days then transfer.

It is best not to transfer to secondary until the primary fermentation is totally finished.

Adding: The plastic is no problem. I would say that about half of home brewers use buckets or Better Bottles and probably half of those do not do a secondary.

 

[homebrewdad]

I agree with the above. You're not going to hurt anything by leaving it in the primary a bit longer - as a matter of fact, you'll probably improve the beer by letting the yeast fully finsih, clean up, etc. Unless you're doing one of a very few styles, I can't imagine a reason that you'd need to move out of the primary quicker than two weeks in, even if your gravity readings are stable.

It seems that a huge percentage of "my beer didn't finish right", "my ber doesn't taste quite right", "I ended up with bottle bombs", etc issues would have been avoided if people would just take a little more time.

 

[medic20]

Just the mention of of bottle bombs due to moving to soon is enough to make me leave it in for an extra week. Considering that I'm using my bedroom closet as my brew closet, the last thing I need is a giant beercano mess on clothing and/or the carpeted floor.

 

[TTB-J]

If you have a hydrometer, use it. If you don't, buy one. You are looking for consistent gravity readings over the course of 2-3 days. Those may happen 1 week after you pitched your yeast, or they may happen 1 month after you pitch your yeast. All that matters is that you take a reading and make a decision based on fact rather than speculate as to what your yeast are doing based on things like airlock bubbles or the number of days since you pitched.

People around here mean well when they say to leave your beer in primary for weeks on end, but the simple fact of the matter is that once fermentation is done, it's done. You gain little or nothing from leaving your beer sitting there on top of inactive yeast. It won't negatively affect your beer, but it won't positively affect it either. So what's the point? If you just use your hydrometer and confirm when the yeast are done, then there's no need to pick an arbitrary day in the future to transfer or bottle.

 

[lgilmore]

The best advice given to any new brewer (myself included) is TIME. Brewing beer is the tortise not the haire. When you read these posts and find a problem in brewing, fermenting or bottling/kegging it all centers around Time, as in not taking the time to do it as it should be. The rush to have finished product is where a lot of these things come from.

Give your beer more time on the primary, couple weeks min. Secondary if you like (I do both secondary and nonsecondary depending) and give it a couple more weeks. Then consider cold crashing and bottling. Then 2-3 weeks plus and you'll have great beer in most cases.

The other best piece of advice is leave it alone, it does fine on it's own. When I bottle I use a couple clear bottles for testing and observation. Prior to that, I don't want to see my beer cause everytime I open it, I am adding O2 to the pail or secondary. So far so good. What I've learned while I am waiting for my beer to finish up, visit costco or someplace and buy some full empties to enjoy during the wait.

 

[jump_xiii]

full empties

Best way to get this past the SWMBO!

"why are you buying more beer?"
"it's not beer, they're just empty bottles that still have beer in them..."

I love it!

 

[Piratwolf]

People around here mean well when they say to leave your beer in primary for weeks on end, but the simple fact of the matter is that once fermentation is done, it's done. You gain little or nothing from leaving your beer sitting there on top of inactive yeast.

This is disputed by a significant number of experienced home brewers on this website. Not taking a side here, just saying I'm not sure it should be asserted as fact in the Beginner's Forum

 

[william_shakes_beer]

All the readings I have made suggest that after the yeast finish eating the available sugars, they begin processing the compounds they produced during primary fermentation. These compounds,if not procesed, often produce off flavors. That's what "cleaning up after themselves" means. Why would you stop them from doing that?

 

[TTB-J]

This is disputed by a significant number of experienced home brewers on this website. Not taking a side here, just saying I'm not sure it should be asserted as fact in the Beginner's Forum

Look, it's biology, not magic. Once there is nothing left to break down inside of your beer - the yeast will stop working, that's just a simple, biological fact. Do yeast "clean-up after themselves," sure, to a certain extent they do, depending on the conditions in your beer. But that's all a part of fermentation - there's no reason why you should consider your fermentation to be complete until all activity from your yeast has ceased. So when I say that "once fermentation is complete, your yeast aren't doing anything," I'm not really saying a whole a lot other than pointing out the obvious, which is sometimes what needs to be done here in the Beginner's Forum.

Leave your beer on the yeast cake or take it off - none of it makes all that much difference from a biological standpoint once fermentation is complete. I just don't like telling beginners: "leave it on the yeast for a month, you'll get a better beer," when technically, those last two weeks didn't do anything at all because fermentation was complete and the beer was just sitting there waiting to be bottled. If we're going to help people become better brewers, it will be by telling them to gather facts (such as gravity readings) and make decisions based on facts. It's science, sure, but it's not rocket science.

 

[Piratwolf]

Once there is nothing left to break down inside of your beer - the yeast will stop working, that's just a simple, biological fact. Do yeast "clean-up after themselves," sure, to a certain extent they do, depending on the conditions in your beer. But that's all a part of fermentation - there's no reason why you should consider your fermentation to be complete until all activity from your yeast has ceased.

I think that this shows why we're disagreeing (and, surprisingly, it's not because I believe in magic!).

It seems to me that in general usage, and especially here, fermentation refers to the action of yeast breaking down sugars into ethyl alcohol, and co2. You seem to extending the word to ANY breaking down but, again in general usage from what I've read on HBT and heard on The Brewing Network, the clean-up process is treated as distinct from the breakdown of sugar.

I don't really care which we all use, but I think it's useful to stay on the same page or at least define our terms (as you did in the part I quoted) so we can all be clear.

Cheers!

 

[paithian]

my first brew i followed the kit directions and racked off yeast after a week then i found this fourm and for my 2nd brew i let it ride not same beer but have been useing a 3 week primary ever scince and the off taste i had in my first brew has not been in any other brew i am all for a no secondary unless bulk age or dryhop fruit oak ect...

 

[BlueZooBrewing]

Look, it's biology, not magic. Once there is nothing left to break down inside of your beer - the yeast will stop working, that's just a simple, biological fact. Do yeast "clean-up after themselves," sure, to a certain extent they do, depending on the conditions in your beer. But that's all a part of fermentation - there's no reason why you should consider your fermentation to be complete until all activity from your yeast has ceased. So when I say that "once fermentation is complete, your yeast aren't doing anything," I'm not really saying a whole a lot other than pointing out the obvious, which is sometimes what needs to be done here in the Beginner's Forum.

Leave your beer on the yeast cake or take it off - none of it makes all that much difference from a biological standpoint once fermentation is complete. I just don't like telling beginners: "leave it on the yeast for a month, you'll get a better beer," when technically, those last two weeks didn't do anything at all because fermentation was complete and the beer was just sitting there waiting to be bottled. If we're going to help people become better brewers, it will be by telling them to gather facts (such as gravity readings) and make decisions based on facts. It's science, sure, but it's not rocket science.

Coming from a biologist, it is not that simple. The first thing you will learn in any biology basics class is that nearly every rule in nature is broken in nature somewhere else. If the only contributing factors that played a role in beer were glucose, fructose and galactose, then yes it would be as simple as "when the gravity stops changing it is done." The incredible diversity of phenols, esters, proteins, amino acids, acid base reactions, and mono and polysaccharides as well as the chemical profile of the water, makes it so that to simplify the behavior of a billion yeast cells that can have as much genetic diversity as we have to each other, to acting like a machine with a sensor and relay switch is a little naive. If the yeast aren't dead, they haven't "stopped". And if there weren't live yeast in the beer, it wouldn't carbonate with introduction of more sugars. Chemical reactions are still occurring, just the noticeable one that creates a carbon dioxide byproduct has slowed significantly.
How much all that affects flavor? Give it a try for yourself and decide. The bubbling is just a sign of one of thousands of chemical reactions that goes on in yeast. Gravity will only be affected by chemical reactions that change the molecular density of the solution, mainly those that produce gasses, or those that generate macromolecules that fall out of suspension. Generally if an organism is making little compounds bigger compounds its because it needs it (again, generally; no rules in biology) so it won't likely leave solution unless it is going with the cell. If you believe the evidence (evidence being your beer) fails to convince you that the rest of the chemical reactions occurring in yeast play any role in flavor, then rock on, transfer when gravity has stabilized, drink up, and enjoy. At the very least I would highly recommend trying each method a couple times, and decide for yourself what your own observations through experimentation and analysis, lead you too. Thats the scientific method, it is the only way we can determine what the best hypothesis is, but even then, it is just a "scientific" guess (quantum mechanics is now even arguing that...)