SG slightly different to FG, this okay?

[IEpicDestiny]

What happens if the gravity is checked for months and still has not stabilised? I'm assuming it would never happen.
I'd also like to know: if I leave in primary for say 3 weeks, would the conditioning in the bottle take less time?

 

[micraftbeer]

I've never had a Tilt trace not flatline eventually within the 1-3 week time window.

Your bottle conditioning time for carbonation would be the same. I also find that there are certain tastes/flavors need time to mellow, which take different amounts of times for different beers/batches. I'm not into the chemistry enough to know what all is going on with the flavor components to offer anything other than a guess that more time in fermentor should mean less time aging in keg/bottle for flavor. But in bottling, this might be a moot point because the amount of time for flavors to come around seem to align with the amount of time to carbonate, and I don't know of any "burst carbonation" option for bottles like you can do for kegs.

 

[DBhomebrew]

What happens if the gravity is checked for months and still has not stabilised? I'm assuming it would never happen.

Sours, Bretts, etc.

 

[TestTickle]

Is it not possible to tell when it is truly done then? How would you know its done in 7 days? I think I'm starting to get it now. So if I left it for another week, would I even need to bother with the readings? It would definitely be done? The readings definitely don't seem to be completely accurate, temperature could also be a cause for it to change slightly

Well, it's definitely possible to tell when it's done. You are doing it correctly for the most part - by checking the gravity and waiting for it to stabilize. That is how to tell if it's done fermenting. The questions start with the inconsistent readings that you are reporting. You seem confident that there were no errors with the readings, and quite honestly, +/- 1 point is normally not a reason to be too concerned. Perhaps it is in fact temperature related. Another point is to not check the FG too frequently. When you think it's done, check it. Then check again in a few days. If there is a change, check it again in a few days. Lather, rinse and repeat. Once you get a stable reading, bottle it.

Technically, there's no guarantee that it'll be done in 7 more days, although it's a pretty safe bet with most yeast. I have a cream ale fermenting right now that was stable for a couple of days, then literally just today (day 11), it dropped another point. Most of my brews are done by now, but this guy is taking his time. I may have fermented it a bit lower than I normally do. I'm not rushing it....I'll wait a few days and see where I am. I personally would take a reading a few days from your last one and if it's the same reading as your last one, go ahead and bottle it.

I apologize if any of my comments have you confused. It's really not that complicated. The point to my comments was to be patient if you have any questions about whether it's done.

To simplify it:

1. Ferment your beer.
2. When you think it's done, take a reading.
3. Wait a few days and take another reading.
4. If the gravity has not changed, package it. If it has changed, wait a few more days and take another reading.

Again, even when the beer reaches its final gravity, there are still some things going on. The yeast does some cleaning up that won't be reflected in the gravity readings or visible activity of any kind. Generally speaking, a few days is enough for this process to complete. The result will be less off flavors and an overall less "green" tasting beer. Waiting a little longer never hurts. In fact, it often helps. This goes for conditioning time in the bottle as well. The recipes might say two weeks in the bottle as well, but an extra week or two will also help clean up some "greenness".

 

[balrog]

True that, pretty much any simple question I have is impossible to find the answer for on the internet. Everything always needs to be more complicated than it is I think..

I am only doing a Simply Ritchies Lager kit lol. Sure if I was doing a high abv beer then 3 weeks would make sense, but this is only 4%

twirl the Hydrometer back and forth to dislodge bubbles if there even are any. If you see bubbles when you twirl you know they were there. Ultimately yes you can pour sample between two containers to knock all gas out.

 

[balrog]

Epic example-pour a glass of carbonated cold beer into hydrometer jar and add hydrometer. You can watch it rise as bubbles affix to the hydrometer.

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Seriously appreciate it everyone, this has all been cleared up now I think. I guess my last question would be, is there anything wrong with checking readings every 2 days instead of 3?
I have about 80 - 100 bottles and I suppose I will have to buy even more if I should be waiting about 2 months for the beer to be completely done, quite a long time.. I would get through all the beer by then.
I also suppose it would be quite horrible to wait that amount of time and then for the batch to be infected or yeasty or something.
I'll admit it is very difficult to give it that extra 2 weeks when you hear about everyones success with doing it in just under week and people telling you to ignore that extra long fermentation, I don't know who to believe sometimes.
But you have all been the most useful and supportive and it does make more sense to leave it longer, so I will follow what you have all told me.

Thanks again!

 

[micraftbeer]

Now that you've settled on waiting... do an experiment. Bottle half now, wait a week and bottle the other half. See if you can taste a difference.

 

[Beermeister32]

You should walk away for a week.

Seriously.

Nothing good comes from doing things too quickly, and nothing bad happens if you wait a week.

Take this as the gospel…. Go do something else for one or two weeks. Plan your next brew day. Go build your next materials list. Paint your garage. Rebuild your truck engine.

Get your mind off it and quit taking so many gravity readings, you are going to oxidize your beer.

Absolutely zero is gained by rushing this process. I was reading some procedures from a commercial brewery, they were using 90 day aging in the tanks before bottling.

 

[TestTickle]

Yes, you could check every two days, just try to be patient. Eventually, you’ll get a better feel for the process.

It’s not a bad idea to have extra bottles on hand to help with the impatience. I have several cases from before I started kegging so that I would always have beer on hand while waiting for others to finish.

While it is definitely beneficial to give it that extra time, you will find that some beers can absolutely be done in 4 or 5 weeks. Most of my ales are done fermenting in 10 days. If I bottle, some can be carbed in a week. They may taste ok by this time, but if I wait another week they are even better. Depending on the beer, another week even makes them better. Same with when I keg. Most times for me, three weeks carbing and conditioning is the sweet spot. But again, a lot of beers benefit from more time.

In the end, it’s your beer and you are the one who needs to like it. Bottle it up, chill one after a week and try it. Chill another one a week later and try it. If it’s good, chill a few more and enjoy them. Then repeat after another week. You should notice an improvement in both quality and clarity over that time. It took me close to a year of brewing to get this. I often noticed that I could still taste the grain and/or the yeast. Extra time cleans that up.

Don’t get caught up in the whole “grain to glass in 7 days” thing. That mostly comes from keggers who use fast yeast and then burst carb. It may work for them and their beer may taste good to them, but it was never my cup of tea. The beer never tasted great…at least not to me.

 

[TestTickle]

By the way, more forgiving styles like IPA’s and stouts mask a lot of imperfections. Try experimenting with lighter brews and you’ll see what we are saying. That was an “aha” moment for me.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I guess my last question would be, is there anything wrong with checking readings every 2 days instead of 3?

The answer is probably dependent on the strain of yeast being used. Apparently, in the history of home brewing, there are some strains (Ringwood?) that had a reputation for pausing for a couple of days, then resuming. For those strains, waiting and checking less frequently were necessary. For some current strains of dry yeast, kit makers seem to be comfortable with pitch it dry and wait a couple weeks.

These [tilt charts] are all different [stains].

@IEpicDestiny : there are similar charts for Fermentis dry yeast in their "Tips and Tricks" brochure (link), p 28. I'll post the charts in the next two replies.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Is there a way to tell if my batch is doing okay? By that I mean, will it turn out flat or off flavours etc. I tasted some of it and it looks cloudy and tastes very flat and yeasty I suppose.
My last batch all turned out to be flat beer with no head and I think it was yeasty too and I would love to know why that was. I think the only thing I did differently was instead of carbonation drops I used sugar (I made sure to measure it correctly for the bottle size). Was there a way to fix this? or beer coming out flat and yeasty like that was something going wrong in the fermentation which you can't tell until secondary fermentation is complete?

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Yes, you could check every two days, just try to be patient. Eventually, you’ll get a better feel for the process.

It’s not a bad idea to have extra bottles on hand to help with the impatience. I have several cases from before I started kegging so that I would always have beer on hand while waiting for others to finish.

While it is definitely beneficial to give it that extra time, you will find that some beers can absolutely be done in 4 or 5 weeks. Most of my ales are done fermenting in 10 days. If I bottle, some can be carbed in a week. They may taste ok by this time, but if I wait another week they are even better. Depending on the beer, another week even makes them better. Same with when I keg. Most times for me, three weeks carbing and conditioning is the sweet spot. But again, a lot of beers benefit from more time.

In the end, it’s your beer and you are the one who needs to like it. Bottle it up, chill one after a week and try it. Chill another one a week later and try it. If it’s good, chill a few more and enjoy them. Then repeat after another week. You should notice an improvement in both quality and clarity over that time. It took me close to a year of brewing to get this. I often noticed that I could still taste the grain and/or the yeast. Extra time cleans that up.

Don’t get caught up in the whole “grain to glass in 7 days” thing. That mostly comes from keggers who use fast yeast and then burst carb. It may work for them and their beer may taste good to them, but it was never my cup of tea. The beer never tasted great…at least not to me.

I suppose mine would be fast yeast if I buy an extract kit with the yeast that comes with it. What is burst carb? Thanks for all your help btw, I have finally got some good incite now after all these months of researching.

 

[TestTickle]

Is there a way to tell if my batch is doing okay? By that I mean, will it turn out flat or off flavours etc. I tasted some of it and it looks cloudy and tastes very flat and yeasty I suppose.
My last batch all turned out to be flat beer with no head and I think it was yeasty too and I would love to know why that was. I think the only thing I did differently was instead of carbonation drops I used sugar (I made sure to measure it correctly for the bottle size). Was there a way to fix this? or beer coming out flat and yeasty like that was something going wrong in the fermentation which you can't tell until secondary fermentation is complete?

You can get a general idea at bottling of how it will turn out once it's carbed and conditioned, but the conditioning process cleans up so much that the final product will change at least some. If you sample it before the yeast is completely done, the cloudiness and yeastiness you described will be more obvious.

Let's start with your bottling process.
1) Are you bottling right from the fermenter or are you using a bottling bucket?
2) How are you adding the sugar?

 

[DBhomebrew]

I tasted some of it and it looks cloudy and tastes very flat and yeasty I suppose.
My last batch all turned out to be flat beer with no head and I think it was yeasty too

Lack of patience. Time after fermentation completes gives the yeast the opportunity to flocculate and fall to the bottom where it stays during bottling. Clearer beer, less yeast, into the bottle.

Lack of carbonation can be a few things, but lack of time in the bottle would be my hunch. Did your previous batches get better over time?

 

[TestTickle]

I suppose mine would be fast yeast if I buy an extract kit with the yeast that comes with it. What is burst carb? Thanks for all your help btw, I have finally got some good incite now after all these months of researching.

Depending on the kit you have, that yeast is most likely a general ale yeast...which are normally not "fast". There is some yeast that will finish in two or three days, those are what I consider fast. What type of beer is this? What kit?

Burst carbing is a kegging practice where you apply a higher PSI of CO2 to the keg and shake or roll it around to get the CO2 to dissolve into the beer faster. It does not apply to bottling.

 

[IEpicDestiny]

You can get a general idea at bottling of how it will turn out once it's carbed and conditioned, but the conditioning process cleans up so much that the final product will change at least some. If you sample it before the yeast is completely done, the cloudiness and yeastiness you described will be more obvious.

Let's start with your bottling process.
1) Are you bottling right from the fermenter or are you using a bottling bucket?
2) How are you adding the sugar?

This is the FV I am using, it does not use an airlock but the loose fit is probably what helps release the carbon dioxide. It also has a valve which makes bottling easier (comes with wand too). I have another FV which uses an airlock and I have a syphon too. But yes I will be bottling straight from the fermenter, I would rather have as less cleaning to do as possible.
Before I measured with teaspoon but since that may have been the cause of my beer going flat last batch I have bought 100s of carbonation drops (more expensive for now but I wanted to make sure they work). I suppose the sugar needs to be pretty exact, some may have gone on the sides of the bottles, however every single beer of that batch was flat and tasted the same.

I will be using carbonation drops this time round (the last time I did it turned out well) but it would be nice to know a better way to put the sugar in each bottle (but I sort of doubt it was to do with the sugar.. no idea. It almost put me off homebrewing though)

 

[IEpicDestiny]

This is the FV I am using, it does not use an airlock but the loose fit is probably what helps release the carbon dioxide. It also has a valve which makes bottling easier (comes with wand too). I have another FV which uses an airlock and I have a syphon too. But yes I will be bottling straight from the fermenter, I would rather have as less cleaning to do as possible.
Before I measured with teaspoon but since that may have been the cause of my beer going flat last batch I have bought 100s of carbonation drops (more expensive for now but I wanted to make sure they work). I suppose the sugar needs to be pretty exact, some may have gone on the sides of the bottles, however every single beer of that batch was flat and tasted the same.

I will be using carbonation drops this time round (the last time I did it turned out well) but it would be nice to know a better way to put the sugar in each bottle (but I sort of doubt it was to do with the sugar.. no idea. It almost put me off homebrewing though)

Come to think of it, maybe its because I did not shake the bottles at all after putting the sugar in. Apparently with carbonation drops you do not need to do that

 

[Miraculix]

Come to think of it, maybe its because I did not shake the bottles at all after putting the sugar in. Apparently with carbonation drops you do not need to do that

You also don't need to do that with normal sugar. It might speed up things a bit, but it's not mandatory. If there's no carbonation, something else is the reason.

We have pretty much narrowed it down here to your capper or not enough sugar in the bottle.

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Lack of patience. Time after fermentation completes gives the yeast the opportunity to flocculate and fall to the bottom where it stays during bottling. Clearer beer, less yeast, into the bottle.

Lack of carbonation can be a few things, but lack of time in the bottle would be my hunch. Did your previous batches get better over time?

That batch was in bottles for over a year (occasionaly would drink 1, I have drank all 40 of them now) so it can't be that

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Depending on the kit you have, that yeast is most likely a general ale yeast...which are normally not "fast". There is some yeast that will finish in two or three days, those are what I consider fast. What type of beer is this? What kit?

Burst carbing is a kegging practice where you apply a higher PSI of CO2 to the keg and shake or roll it around to get the CO2 to dissolve into the beer faster. It does not apply to bottling.

It is a Simply Ritchies Lager kit

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Just to mention as well, I make sure all my beers are correctly stored, first warm and dark and then cool dark place (Using thermometers to make sure

 

[TestTickle]

You definitely do not want to shake up the bottles, ever.

If it's a lager, then it likely has lager yeast which you normally want to ferment cooler and longer, but if you fermented at room temp, that likely sped up the process. It'll still make beer, maybe just not quite as crisp and clean as if you were to ferment cooler. No big deal for now.

Regarding your bottling process, I would suggest using one of your fermenters as a bottling bucket. Preferably one with a spigot. It's more to clean, but worth it IMHO. This could be a lengthy reply...

 

[TestTickle]

If you are using carbonation drops, bottling from the fermenter is fine. However, if you want to use priming sugar, here's how I would do it:

1. Start by marking off volumes on the outside of whatever you will use as a bottling bucket. Masking tape is fine. Measure and use water to mark your volumes. This will help you determine how much beer you are actually bottling and how much sugar to use.
2. Sanitize everything of course.
3. Transfer your beer to the bottling bucket....gently of course. No splashing.
4. Note the volume of beer based on your markings
5. Calculate and measure the sugar based on the volume in your bucket.
6. Dissolve the sugar in just enough water to dissolve it well and bring it to a boil. Depending on your batch size, this could be anywhere from a half cup to a cup of water (or more for bigger batches)
7. Slowly and gently add the water to the beer.
8. Gently stir with a large sanitized spoon to mix the priming solution with the beer
9. Bottle the beer, cap and store

For bottling, make sure you are using some hose from the spigot and if possible a bottling wand. I actually connect a bottling wand right to the spigot with a short piece of tubing. The bucket hang over the side of a counter and I can just sit and bottle one after the other. There was a really good thread on this some years back...I'll try to find it and post it.

Priming this way results in more consistent carbonation across all bottles and lets you control your carbonation levels better. Plus, it's cheaper than buying carb drops. The only downside is that you expose your beer to oxygen and have a higher risk of contamination, but I can honestly say that I have never had an issue with either. Just be careful and don't leave the beer exposed for longer than necessary.

For recipes that you end up doing regularly, you should be able to better predict how much you lose in the fermenter and how much actual bottling volume you have. In this case, you can pre-measure the sugar, add the priming solution to the bottling bucket and transfer the beer from the fermenter right on top of that.

 

[TestTickle]

Here you go, it's a lengthy thread, but there is a lot of valuable info regarding the bottling process.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/bottling-tips-for-the-homebrewer.94812/

 

[Miraculix]

Or Just buy yourself a small gold scale for ten bugs and weigh the sugar for each bottle and fill it in with a small funnel. Takes like 15 minutes for a 4g batch and you can be sure that the sugar is the same in each bottle plus you are lowering oxygen exposure.

 

[IEpicDestiny]

Checked the gravity today and it is now stable at 1.007, should I bottle it or wait? If I did wait, would the gravity change again?