Possibly silly question about my stout.

[faerielady]

First off, I'm a mead brewer. This is my first beer brewing experience. With mead, I wouldn't even consider moving to the secondary until after several weeks (minimum of 2, usually a month or more). In mead, there IS a secondary, whereas beer apparently doesn't always have that. Mead also has to sit around for a lot longer aging than beer usually does. So.

I have a java stout extract kit that I brewed last Friday. I took a SG reading of 1.012 on Wednesday, which was repeated Thursday, then again today. So. The beer is done fermenting already (that was fast, but my house is a constant 68 degrees, so I'm not surprised).

The directions on the kit said java after 5 days in the secondary, so I listened. I brewed the coffee and put it in the bottom of my (cleaned, sanitized) secondary. I then racked off the beer onto the coffee to keep from introducing a ton of air.

The extract directions tell me to use the corn sugar and bottle at 2 weeks (next Friday evening). Do I need to wait until then, even though the SG hasn't moved in 3 days?

Again, I'm a mead brewer, a week is negligible. However, it's a matter of "will it hurt me if I bottle it on Wednesday instead of Friday" versus "OMG it's done brewing shouldn't I just put it in the bottles NAO" thing, which I know to be a fallacy.

 

[Calder]

Once it's finished, you can bottle if you want. There is no minimum time. However, I would recommend you let it sit a while, otherwise you will end up lots of sediment in the bottom of the bottles. Leaving it for a few weeks in bulk will not harm it, and will probably help it. I generally don't even think about bottling until at least 4 weeks.

......... Not sure I have the patience for mead.

 

[faerielady]

See, that's what I was curious about... if I don't bottle it by next Wednesday, I won't have a chance to bottle it for another week and a half. Which, from everything I've been reading on the forums (literally a couple hours/day for the past couple weeks, lots of great info), longer is just fine.

Kinda like my mead

Mead, to me anyway, is a lot simpler. Recipe - yeast - primary - secondary - bulk age. Like the chocolate, it's been aging 6 months already, and it'll need at least six more. Two of the ones I've got in secondaries only need 3-6 months more and they'll be drinkable. I don't have to worry about IBUs an whatnot... just SG and FG.