Almost Two Weeks in the Pimary.

[Drunken Monk]

Second batch is in the primary. I brewed it the sunday before last so it's been almost two weeks. It's an American Brown Ale. OG was 1.065 then I added I added 12 oz of Maple Syrup directly to the Primary 2-3 days after the start of fermentation. Took about a day to start fermenting. I used White Labs California Ale Yeast but didn't bother making a starter. Now its been almost two weeks and there's still some action coming from the air lock, it bubbles every few minutes. It seems like its almost done. There is still a lot of krausen on the beer. My question I guess is does everyone wait until the krausen has dropped out to transfer to secondary? I'm thinking of transfering to my bottling bucket, cleaning the primary carboy, then transferring back to carboy for secondary, then finally back to bottling bucket for priming and bottling. Anyone have an idea on how lon I should secondary?

 

[Professor Frink]

Did you take a hydrometer reading? Honestly, I would just leave it. It sounds like a little fermentation is going on, so I would check the gravity a couple days apart and see if it's dropping. A brown ale doesn't necessarily need a secondary, and if you move the beer back and forth like that you risk oxygenation.

 

[Drunken Monk]

so you think i should just primary until the krausen goes down, take a few readings so i know its stable then prime in bottling bucket, bottle and condition for three weeks?

 

[BierMuncher]

so you think i should just primary until the krausen goes down, take a few readings so i know its stable then prime in bottling bucket, bottle and condition for three weeks?

That sounds likea nice big beer.

Some krausen never goes down (wit yeast especially).

If it were my beer, I'd let the hydrometer do the talking. Especially with a bigger beer like that...you could have some residual fermentation for some time.

I like your transfer routine fo secondary conditioning you mentioned earlier.

I'd take a reading now. Take another tomorrow and the next day and as soon as you get three consecutive readings that are the same, then go ahead and rack to a secondary for 2-3 weeks and then bottle.