Rising gravity?

[jbosh9]

Hi all,

A couple questions about my 1st brew in almost 15 years:

I did a single stage fermentation brown ale with extract. The recipe said let it ferment for a week to 10 days before bottling. I decided to wait 2 weeks just to be safe but ended up losing track of time (I've been busy) and it spent about 23 days in my plastic fermenter. Is this too long to be in plastic or sitting on the yeast cake?

Also, my recipe (I don't have it with me) said my FG should be about 1.010. 10 days into my fermentation I did a reading and got about 1.014. It looked good to me, I was happy. But when I bottled over a week later I got 1.017. I can't think of any possible way for the SG to increase so my theory is I misread the 1.014. Are there any other possible explanations? Regardless, my predicted FG and actual FG were off by .007 (Perhaps I should call it "special agent ale"). I was extremely diligent and followed the recipe exactly. Should I be concerned about the discrepancy?

Thank you

 

[Yooper]

Three weeks in primary is fine- I usually do primary for 10 days or so, but you won't harm your beer in three weeks. The only way the s.g. would rise is if you either didn't correct for temperature and took one reading at say 50 degrees, and the other at maybe 80. Or, if you took the f.g. after you added the priming sugar.

As long as the fermentation was done, you're ok to bottle. Next time, if you're unsure, I"d recommend taking the s.g. three days in a row to make sure they stay the same before bottling. Don't worry about this batch, though- the important thing is that you're back into brewing!