A few general questions about my homebrew. Any help?

[CCD]

On monday night, I was presented with the chance to make a home brew. Long story short, I work for a beer distributorship, and whoever has the best brew gets a fancy little prize. Anyway, I started on Monday night, followed the instructions (Amber ale) and my starting gravity (SG) measured 1.054. Neat...i can live with that.
I wake up the next morning (Tuesday) and my fermentation lock is already burping bubbles ( I found it wierd that it happened so quickly) and by the time I get off of work (10 hours later) there's no activity. Now I start to get a little worried. Fast forward to today, and there's still no activity in the fermentation lock. So being the impatient person I am (bad, I know) i decided to open the bucket and take a measurement with my hydrometer.
Today the specific gravity measured 1.020.

My questions are:
(1.) Does it sound like fermentation is done and could it happen that quickly? I find it odd that the fermentation lock is quiet 3 days after starting..
and (2.) Since it's measuring 1.020 SG right now, should I transfer over into my secondary glass carboy??

Thanks in advanced...any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nateo]

The bulk of fermentation will be done within a few days. The higher the temp, the faster the ferment. If you're fermenting at room temperature (which is a bit higher than optimal) then it's absolutely possible the yeast could be "done" within 3 days.

That said, you should really not transfer your beer to secondary, and should leave it in the primary for 2-3 weeks to make sure the yeast have time to clean up after themselves and finish fermenting the product.

You should only use a secondary ferment if you have a good reason to do so. Meaning, bulk conditioning of a barleywine, dry hopping, oak aging, etc. A secondary just increases the chances you'll contaminate your beer.

 

[themashedone]

to be sure your fermentation is done take a hydrometer reading two days in a row if the gravity reading is the same 1.020 for the two days the yeast is no longer eating sugar thus meaning fermentation is over.

 

[CCD]

Thank you both for the speedy response and help! Very useful information!

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Another thing worth mentioning is to gently rock your fermenter from side to side several times to gently rouse the yeast off the bottom and back into suspension again. After doing this I usually see additional activity, more krausen, on the top of the fermenting beer.

As for racking to a secondary, every time you move your beer off of the trub and dead yeast, your beer gets a bit cleaner. This will reduce the amount of gunk that can eventually get into your bottles or kegs.