Is it done?

jsunww · Jul 11, 2011

I'm a noob and I brewed my first batch on July 6th. It's a 5 gal batch of an American Wheat extract kit. The OG was 1.043 and today, five days later it's at 1.013. The airlock is bubbling about once every 40 seconds. I'll take another hydrometer reading tomorrow night, but I wasn't expecting the difference to be that much this soon. Is it on track? Should I wait another few days before bottling? My understanding is that it's supposed to ferment for at least a week, the air lock should bubble about once per minute and the hydrometer reading should be steady before I start bottling. I guess what I'm really looking for is affirmation that everything is still okay.

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible · Jul 11, 2011

Welcome to the obsession. STAND AWAY FROM THE BEER!. Leave it to do it's stuff for a while longer. It's hard, I know..........I'm not even going to give you any clues. Search the forum, it's the best way to fill in your waiting time while learning some good stuff.

SD-SLIM · Jul 11, 2011

jsunww said:
I'm a noob and I brewed my first batch on July 6th. It's a 5 gal batch of an American Wheat extract kit. The OG was 1.043 and today, five days later it's at 1.013. The airlock is bubbling about once every 40 seconds. I'll take another hydrometer reading tomorrow night, but I wasn't expecting the difference to be that much this soon. Is it on track? Should I wait another few days before bottling? My understanding is that it's supposed to ferment for at least a week, the air lock should bubble about once per minute and the hydrometer reading should be steady before I start bottling. I guess what I'm really looking for is affirmation that everything is still okay.

You should relax and let your yeast work...for most beers that work will be completed in 3 weeks. For Ales, you will have vigorous fermentation from 2 to 10 days...after the vigorous part is done your beer will still continue to ferment up to 14 days (in general, yeast sometimes do weird things).....so after a 2 week fermentation period, you beer will enter what is called a conditioning period...at this time the yeast will continue to work cleaning up byproducts and heavy sugars, this period will last for a week....from here you could age your beer longer, but for your recipe thats not nessecary...you would bottle and drink 3 weeks later.
So leave it alone for 3 weeks, then bottle...don't use a secondary and only take readings after 14 days, if you are seeing any airlock activity your beer isnt done (unless it goes beyond 3 weeks then you have weird yeast and will need to rack to a secondary...but this rarely happens).

Elweydoloco · Jul 12, 2011

You're fine no worries. If you have a secondary and prefer clarity then a week or so is perfectly acceptable to transfer. Make sure you cover the carboy. A stupid noon mistake is to leave the carboy uncovered. If you still have the packaging your kit came in the box everything was in works great.

COLObrewer · Jul 12, 2011

Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:
Welcome to the obsession. STAND AWAY FROM THE BEER!. Leave it to do it's stuff for a while longer. It's hard, I know..........I'm not even going to give you any clues. Search the forum, it's the best way to fill in your waiting time while learning some good stuff.

This is the best answer I've seen for the "newb panic question", I take back all the bad stuf I said about Ohians.