Bottle now, or wait another week?

[homebrewdad]

My first brew (Yorkshire square brown ale, extract kit w/specialty grains from AHS) is sitting patiently in the secondary. I left it fifteen days in primary, then racked it to secondary where it has spent the last two weeks. I am trying to take the long view and be patient in order to maximize the quality of my beer... but it is getting very difficult to wait, since I don't have my pipeline going yet (batch #2 has been in primary for a week now).

The OG specified on the kit was 1.051. After serious aeration (fifteen plus minutes of shaking and sloshing... overkill, I now know) I pulled three consecutive readings of 1.075 (after spinning to release bubbles, verifying that pure water gave a 1.000, etc). I'm figuring that I have to just be a rookie who has hydrometer issues, right?

Anyway, the target FG was 1.013. Day twelve showed a 1.012, which remained stable to day fifteen, whereupon I racked to secondary for clarifying (and freeing up my primary for the next batch).

I'm itching to bottle now, since I plan to give it at least the three full weeks to carb and such. However, I do again want to ensure that the beer is as good as it can be... how much more benefit will I get by waiting another week to bottle?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[RM-MN]

At this point I think you have showed exemplary patience and should bottle that ale. Since you had a stable FG at day 15, racking to secondary was probably unnecessary but will give your beer good clarity. Now it's time to get that in the bottle. Keep it at room temperature to get carbonation. My beers have all been carbonated at the end of a week and you may want to try one but you can be pretty sure if you wait 3 weeks. With 4 weeks in the fermenter I think your beer has matured quite nicely already.

 

[beergolf]

Bottle it up....

Then brew more.

 

[homebrewdad]

At this point I think you have showed exemplary patience and should bottle that ale. Since you had a stable FG at day 15, racking to secondary was probably unnecessary but will give your beer good clarity. Now it's time to get that in the bottle. Keep it at room temperature to get carbonation. My beers have all been carbonated at the end of a week and you may want to try one but you can be pretty sure if you wait 3 weeks. With 4 weeks in the fermenter I think your beer has matured quite nicely already.

Thanks. I do know that secondary is not required, but I was hoping to clarify the beer a bit - and I wanted to free up my primary for the next batch (even though it ended up sitting empty for a week).

I'm getting excited to see how this is going to turn out!

 

[unionrdr]

I agree to bottle it up. At this point,it should be clear or nearly so.