Tiny bubbles rising in carboy

[coldscooter]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to homebrewing. I've been doing grain with malt extract for my first few batches and they have turned out very well.

Every time I rack my beer into the carboy, after a couple of days i see tiny bubbles rising and collecting around the edges of the surface of the beer. Is this fermentation, or something else? I'm hesitant to bottle while I see this happening, even if the gravity reading has stopped changing from day to day.

I notice that a simple glass of water will collect air bubbles if you leave it for some time. Is this what these bubbles are in the carboy?

I'm really eager to bottle a stout that i'm doing at the moment, but would like to hear some feedback from more seasoned brewers about these tiny bubbles before doing so.

Thanks in advance.

 

[keesh]

Basically if your fermentation is finished (when you hit your final gravity and it doesn't change for 3 days) then any bubbles you see rising, especially after racking, is simply CO2 escaping out of solution. The CO2 is trapped in the liquid from fermentation, basically whatever didn't escape during primary. What I would just do is use http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html this calculator and plug in the temperature of your beer at bottling. The amount of residual CO2 is largely determined by the temperature of the beer, and you need to compensate for it so you don't over-carb.