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Keep in mind that scaling your recipe to exactly 2 gallons will leave you no headspace for krausen, etc. during primary. You probably should factor in about 20% (maybe more if you're expecting a vigorous fermentation) of your fermenter volume for headspace, which means you probably should...

Great read. Thanks for the link.

Also, assuming you had a good primary fermentation and didn't dry hop until primary was done, it'd be pretty hard for any infection to take hold. Not impossible, but fairly unlikely since there would be fewer sugars to feed an infection and enough alcohol to keep one from taking hold. Of...

Short answer: no. :-) Slightly longer answer: airlock activity is a very poor gauge of fermentation. Trust the yeast to do their thing in their own time and you'll be well rewarded.

Are you noticing issues with your finished product or just in the separate sample you put off to the side? How long does it take to cool your wort to pitching temp? I suspect it's virtually impossible to keep all unwanted microscopic critters out of your wort, unless you're brewing in a...

Sounds like it's fermenting just fine, so just let it keep going at its own pace. Repitching when the fermentation is already going smoothly doesn't serve any useful purpose (that I'm aware of at least).

Oh man. I feel for you. I've fortunately haven't had a similar experience, although it does feel like I'm always fighting picnic taps. I guess every batch is a learning experience, but it sucks that it was such a painful one in this case...

With Christmas fast approaching, I'm getting the inevitable "what do you want?" question, which gets increasing harder to answer since I generally go out and buy what I want, when I want it. :-) I've recently started putting together my first All Grain kit together and it's already in pretty...

Did you aerate the wort before pitching the yeast? What was your final gravity? The 80 degree pitching temp seems a little high, especially since 1056 likes to ferment between 60 and 72 degrees.

What yeast did you use? What was your fermentation temperature?

Oh, and you mention opening the tap to get a sample, which implies you have a fermenter with a spigot. If that's the case, you can take samples without exposing your beer to oxygen or other critters, but be warned that some folks have had issues with contaminants growing in the spigot itself...

After primary is complete, contamination is a lot less likely, especially if the lid is just open briefly to add dry hops or take a gravity reading. Most of the sugars in the wort, which provide a haven for nasty critters to grow, have been replaced by alcohol, which is much less inviting to...

When did you brew the beer? How long are you going to be gone? Why do you think you need to slow it down? I tend to think that vacation times are ideal for getting a batch going and then leaving it to do its thing. No temptation to check on it incessantly and when you get home you have...

It basically means that there are still fermentable sugars left in the beer but for some reason the yeast aren't consuming those sugars and converting it to alcohol. That's why you'd have a higher gravity reading than the recipe calls for (more sugar = higher gravity). We're getting pretty...

That's generally correct. The one caveat is that if your FG reading isn't close to what it should be (based on the recipe you used), then you might have a stuck fermentation that you'd want to try to resolve before bottling.

Yes, you can dry hop in the primary. The main time you may want to go to a secondary is if your expect to age your beer for an extended period of time prior to bottling/kegging. Transferring to secondary will allow you to get your beer off the yeast cake, which could impart some off flavors...

What aspect of it do you need explained? How to take it? What it means?

A growler of Vanilla Porter from Dry Dock Brewing. Will probably try my brother's clone of the Dry Dock Enterprise IPA later tonight...

Sounds like you had the temperature about right. Your attenuation is about 68%, which is on the low end for that yeast (White Labs site claims 70% to 75% attenuation for WLP028). Still, if it's been stable for that long, it's probably done. There are so many variables involved that you may...

What's the fermentation temp? What yeast did you use? I'd say that normally 3 weeks at the same FG (especially with a shaking/repitching in there) would typically indicate your fermentation is done, but knowing the fermentation temp and type of yeast would be helpful. If you're...