Can’t you Bottle as Soon as Activity Stops, or must I wait 2-4 Weeks? Cleans not sours.

[TEWNCfarms]

So if I am fermenting and activity stops, can I bottle or should I wait the entire 4 weeks? Morebeers pale ale recipe that comes with their kit, only says 2 weeks. New kits from Northern say to wait 4 weeks. Is it better to age it? I’m only talking about clean beers

 

[Qhrumphf]

As soon as the beer is fully fermented and conditioned you can bottle. Airlocks are a poor measure of activity- trust gravity readings (and don't rely on the kit instructions for FG- you want gravity stable over a couple days- bottling prior to that is really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing).

The conditioning part is the tough one. Newer brewers with less control over their fermentation management (poor pitch rate, poor yeast health, insufficient oxygen when pitching, and poor temp control all rampant among beginning and intermediate homebrewers), the longer it'll take to condition. These can leave behind diacetyl, acetaldehyde, etc that take longer to clean up.

The other factor is clarity. Some strains drop bright fast. Others can take time. If the beer is done you don't HAVE to wait for it to clear (you'll get more sediment in bottles/kegs), or you can wait out. Or you can drop the yeast out yourself faster (cold and/or finings).

With low gravity, cask conditioned beers and English yeasts I've been drinking naturally carbed beer in less than a week. I've also used lager yeasts that have crawled through a 4 week fermentation (not including diacetyl rest, ramp down, and lagering time, totalling more than 2 months in all)- I won't use that yeast again.

So basically, in ideal circumstances two weeks is probably plenty, but you may prefer your results waiting 4 wks.

 

[4of7]

What are you fermenting in? Are you in a hurry ? I agree with most of the above ,..Do you know what a beer bomb does?If you are in a hurry match the yeast to that time frame. I like to watch the phases in the carboy

 

[TEWNCfarms]

As soon as the beer is fully fermented and conditioned you can bottle. Airlocks are a poor measure of activity- trust gravity readings (and don't rely on the kit instructions for FG- you want gravity stable over a couple days- bottling prior to that is really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing).

The conditioning part is the tough one. Newer brewers with less control over their fermentation management (poor pitch rate, poor yeast health, insufficient oxygen when pitching, and poor temp control all rampant among beginning and intermediate homebrewers), the longer it'll take to condition. These can leave behind diacetyl, acetaldehyde, etc that take longer to clean up.

The other factor is clarity. Some strains drop bright fast. Others can take time. If the beer is done you don't HAVE to wait for it to clear (you'll get more sediment in bottles/kegs), or you can wait out. Or you can drop the yeast out yourself faster (cold and/or finings).

With low gravity, cask conditioned beers and English yeasts I've been drinking naturally carbed beer in less than a week. I've also used lager yeasts that have crawled through a 4 week fermentation (not including diacetyl rest, ramp down, and lagering time, totalling more than 2 months in all)- I won't use that yeast again.

So basically, in ideal circumstances two weeks is probably plenty, but you may prefer your results waiting 4 wks.

Awesome thanks for your help!

 

[TEWNCfarms]

What are you fermenting in? Are you in a hurry ? I agree with most of the above ,..Do you know what a beer bomb does?If you are in a hurry match the yeast to that time frame. I like to watch the phases in the carboy

Yes and trust me I have a very real fear of those! Currently in a fermonster but going to be using a speidel next. And yeah, I’d much prefer to have beer in half the time, but I also prefer better quality so I’m willing to wait if that’s what it means. Which is what I’m willing to do for sours I’m going to be doing soon.

 

[RM-MN]

With decent fermentation temperature control on a pale ale I might keep it cool for 3-4 days, warm it to room temp until day 7, dry hop and then bottle on day 10. There doesn't seem to be much difference to one that has had 3 or 4 weeks except a little more sediment in the bottles.

Now for a bit of heresy, I have drunk one of these after only 2 days in the bottle. The taste is fine and it has fair carbonation but creates absolutely no head. Heading takes a week or more to develop.

Be sure to use your hydrometer to verify that the fermentation is complete on day 7 or you do risk bottle bombs.

 

[TEWNCfarms]

With decent fermentation temperature control on a pale ale I might keep it cool for 3-4 days, warm it to room temp until day 7, dry hop and then bottle on day 10. There doesn't seem to be much difference to one that has had 3 or 4 weeks except a little more sediment in the bottles.

Now for a bit of heresy, I have drunk one of these after only 2 days in the bottle. The taste is fine and it has fair carbonation but creates absolutely no head. Heading takes a week or more to develop.

Be sure to use your hydrometer to verify that the fermentation is complete on day 7 or you do risk bottle bombs.

Do you all just use a straight hydrometer each time? I feel like that’s a lot being taken out... my first batch was right at 5 gallons I didn’t realize I needed to add .5-.75 gallons to make up for trub losses.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Loss is part of the process. Just build in for it. When I do 5 gals I'm cutting boil at 6 gals and putting 5.5 gals into the fermenter so that I get 5 gals packaged. If I'm heavily dry hopping I may even increase the volume more than that (or accept I'll package less than 5 gals). One of the justifications for doing 10-15 gals at a time instead of 5 is the percentage loss for samples goes down.

One option to mitigate loss, is using a refractometer instead of hydrometer. Many of us use them for pre-fermentation readings. The problem using them in the fermenter is that alcohol changes the reading so it needs to be adjusted. My understanding used to be that the correction formulas weren't very accurate but if I understand correctly they have improved in recent years.

However, if your goal is just ensuring fermentation is done, you really don't need to correct it, just make sure it's stable, and then you could read with a hydrometer when bottling to get the correct number.

The bigger problem with that method is not tasting the beer- once you get more experience that alone can tell you a lot.


Another option, some people will drop a sanitized hydrometer into the beer itself rather than removing a sample (in a bucket fermenter) but I don't like the oxygen exposure that entails, plus same lack of tasting.

There are electronic doodads out there marketed to homebrewers that'll read gravity real time and report it to a phone and what have you. Basically you'd sanitize em during brew day, pop em in the fermenter, and leave them there.

There's also other alternatives to refractometer or hydrometer, but they get expensive, like density meters that use far smaller samples. Anton Paar (the gold standard for measuring equipment) makes one marketed to homebrewers (and nano-scale pros) but its still $400.
https://www.morebeer.com/products/easydens-anton-paar.html

 

[MGamber]

A wine thief works well, too. Sanitize it and the hydropmeter, put the hydrometer in it, put it in the carboy far enough to get the hydrometer off the bottom, take your reading and then put the sample back in the carboy by touching the bottom to the side of the carboy. No muss, no fuss, no loss. They cost $10-15 at a local homebrew shop.

 

[TEWNCfarms]

Loss is part of the process. Just build in for it. When I do 5 gals I'm cutting boil at 6 gals and putting 5.5 gals into the fermenter so that I get 5 gals packaged. If I'm heavily dry hopping I may even increase the volume more than that (or accept I'll package less than 5 gals). One of the justifications for doing 10-15 gals at a time instead of 5 is the percentage loss for samples goes down.

One option to mitigate loss, is using a refractometer instead of hydrometer. Many of us use them for pre-fermentation readings. The problem using them in the fermenter is that alcohol changes the reading so it needs to be adjusted. My understanding used to be that the correction formulas weren't very accurate but if I understand correctly they have improved in recent years.

However, if your goal is just ensuring fermentation is done, you really don't need to correct it, just make sure it's stable, and then you could read with a hydrometer when bottling to get the correct number.

The bigger problem with that method is not tasting the beer- once you get more experience that alone can tell you a lot.


Another option, some people will drop a sanitized hydrometer into the beer itself rather than removing a sample (in a bucket fermenter) but I don't like the oxygen exposure that entails, plus same lack of tasting.

There are electronic doodads out there marketed to homebrewers that'll read gravity real time and report it to a phone and what have you. Basically you'd sanitize em during brew day, pop em in the fermenter, and leave them there.

There's also other alternatives to refractometer or hydrometer, but they get expensive, like density meters that use far smaller samples. Anton Paar (the gold standard for measuring equipment) makes one marketed to homebrewers (and nano-scale pros) but its still $400.
https://www.morebeer.com/products/easydens-anton-paar.html

Yeah thankfully I got some 30L speidels that will be perfect to do a 6.5 gallon batch then I can rack to a fermonster without the trub and have a full 6 gallons to do with as I please (for sours), and just do the same with cleans too really, but just keep them in speidels.

I thought about that with the hydrometer in the fermenter but figured it’d be a lot of oxygen. I’ve got spigots so I can just take samples. My gravity on my first ever brew is at 1.013 I believe right now (journal is out at my farm house) and OG was 1.061 for an American pale ale kit that came with my morebeer kit.

And yeah I’d Love to get some of those fancy doodads you speak of but too expensive for me, but they are nice, the WiFi hydrometer.

 

[RM-MN]

Do you all just use a straight hydrometer each time? I feel like that’s a lot being taken out... my first batch was right at 5 gallons I didn’t realize I needed to add .5-.75 gallons to make up for trub losses.

I only need to do 2 hydrometer readings a couple days apart to know for sure my beer has complete fermentation before I bottle. I use the plastic tube the hydrometer came in for the samples so there isn't a lot of beer in there to lose and I drink the sample each time to see if I have off flavors. By drinking the samples I don't consider that beer to be a loss, just a necessary part of brewing.

 

[TEWNCfarms]

I only need to do 2 hydrometer readings a couple days apart to know for sure my beer has complete fermentation before I bottle. I use the plastic tube the hydrometer came in for the samples so there isn't a lot of beer in there to lose and I drink the sample each time to see if I have off flavors. By drinking the samples I don't consider that beer to be a loss, just a necessary part of brewing.

Haha yeah I see what you’re saying, thanks

 

[Yooper]

I almost always package my beers by day 14 or so, depending on the beer. If it's a beer that I've dryhopped, it might be day 17.

The thing is, if you bottle a beer that is already clear (or clearing), you will have much less sediment in the bottle to deal with. So the recipe is a big part of that. Using a flocculant yeast means a beer quicker to clear, if it suits the recipe. Some yeast strains never seem to clear for me, and that can make a difference.

 

[Soulshine2]

So if I am fermenting and activity stops, can I bottle or should I wait the entire 4 weeks? Morebeers pale ale recipe that comes with their kit, only says 2 weeks. New kits from Northern say to wait 4 weeks. Is it better to age it? I’m only talking about clean beers

when activity stops and gravity is stable for no less than 24 hours (48 is better), assuming it is at the target FG, I bottle. YMMV . The clarity end of it may require a little more time , cold crash a day or overnight.

 

[kh54s10]

By activity, no it might not be ready. When the krausen drops and the airlock stops bubbling it may look like it is finished but in reality it has just stopped producing more co2 than the fermenter can hold. The gravity of the beer may still be dropping. You also want to allow time for the sediment to fall.

I usually go three weeks or longer, but that is because I keep putting off the bottling or kegging. I always go to 2 weeks, unless I suspect a problem I assume it is finished. I take one reading and if the FG is close to prediction I go ahead and bottle it. Risky but I have never created bottle bombs.

Some beers and yeast combinations will take longer. Some high alcohol, heavy beers may take a lot longer.