Irish Stout Recipe

[jrsmith1406]

So I am a first time home brewer and decided on a recipe from my local home brewing store. It contained 5lbs of Dark Dried Malt Extract, 1 bag of specialty malts (eng chocolate, eng dark crystal, flaked barley, eng roasted barley), 2 1/4 oz East Kent Golding bittering pellet hops, 1 tablet whirlfloc and 1 cup of priming sugar. The first 3 days in the primary i had a lot of action in the water lock then it slowed. I transferred to my secondary after 7 days and really havent seen any action on day 9. My concern is that the yeast may have already died and when i bulk prime on day 14 and transfer to my bottles for their two week stay in there before drinking that there wont be any yeast to eat the priming sugar and create the carbonation. Am I wrong? Any help would be great!

 

[JimRausch]

Have you taken any SG readings? Critical to know where you are in the fermentation process.
You might have been finished with active fermentation at 3 days, or at 7 days when you racked. But you might not have been, so you might have transferred too soon.(Lots of 'mights'). Plus, it's generally a good idea to leave the beer on it's yeast cake for a week or two beyond the end of active fermentation. You won't notice anything happening, but the yeast are still working, dropping the SG by a couple points and cleaning up the byproducts that were produced early in fermentation. This results in a much better beer. When you transfer too soon, you are removing the largest part of the yeast cake, slowing down the whole cleanup process.
But, guarenteed that you still have live yeast, so no problem there. Just make sure you take a reading before you think about bottling.

 

[jrsmith1406]

My beginning SG was 1.045. I transferred to the secondary on day 7 like the directions said but I did not check the SG when I did this. When I check it at day 14, what should it be?

Should I have left in the primary longer than 7 days?

 

[Math0]

Most brewer would say that reading the same gravity 2 or 3 days in a row means the end of fermentation. Sometimes the beer will be still bubbling after that but it has nothing to do with fermentation. It is degasing


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[JimRausch]

My beginning SG was 1.045. I transferred to the secondary on day 7 like the directions said but I did not check the SG when I did this. When I check it at day 14, what should it be?

Should I have left in the primary longer than 7 days?

FG depends on the fermentatbility of your wort, the temperatures the yeast fermented at, and the attenuation ability of the yeast strain. The 1st two variables are hard to guess at their affect, but if you look up your yeast it should tell you it's attenuation %. Of course that's under ideal conditions, but let's say for an example that your yeast attenuates to 75%. 75% of 1.045 is 1.011. So your final gravity should be somewhere near that.
Did you ruin your beer by transferring too soon? No, but it may not be the best. The kit instructions from most LHBS that I've seen are generally based on old information- namely that it's best to get the beer off the yeast cake as soon as possible. That is based on old info. from back in the days when the available yeast was not so good. We are blessed with a large # of strains of excellent quality yeast. Current thought is to let the yeast do their job uninterrupted until they are finished( which you can only tell by taking serial SGs). Two-3 weeks on the primary yeast cake is becoming the new standard, then maybe transfer to a conditioning vessel, maybe leave it alone for another week or two, maybe keg/bottle it right away. The maybes are a source of discussion, and at this point seems to be a personal decision.