klars, I'm having a similar experience. I brewed Oatmeal Stout from Midwest on Saturday afternoon, finished by 5 pm or so. Cooled it very quickly with my new wort chiller, and dumped it in the bucket, threw the Safale yeast on top, and put the lid on. Had vigorous airlock bubbling less than 3 hours later. Now I have no airlock activity. Current temp on the bucket says 66f. I only filled to 4 gallons, as I'm hoping to have a half batch of an oatmeal stout, and then add some cold steeped coffee to the other half for a breakfast stout. It looks like I had some krausen, but looks like it has fallen back down (the sides of the bucket look crusty about 1-2 inches above the 4 gallon mark). I haven't opened the bucket to actually see, but I can see levels through the bucket. SG was around 1.060 after taking into account temperature. I'm paranoid to open the bucket and take a gravity reading at such an early stage.
Now the stuff I know I forgot to do, and is driving me nuts:
Forgot to aerate the wort, other than dumping into bucket after chilling.
Forgot to put water in the airlock until 3 hours later. At which point, I panicked and dumped water from an unsanitized cup into the airlock (I don't think I poured any into the bucket though).
This is my 2nd brew, and the first didn't go so well. I'm chalking that up to bad ingredients that had sat on the shelf for a while. Someone want to talk me down, or tell me it's ok to open the bucket, see what is happening and take a gravity reading?
I see Yooper stating that S04 is a beast and easily ferments in 24-48 hours, so I'm feeling a bit better, but I'll probably be worried until I actually taste some of my own good homebrew.
Finally, assuming fermentation is done, how long should I leave it in the fermenter to clear up off flavors? 1-2 weeks?