When to bottle when you have annoying one bubble per min. in secondary?

[akardam]

I decided this time to adopt the 1-2-3 rule to check out how secondary conditioning affects the beer.. (note I haven't reached step 3 - bottling step). After the bubble rate in airlock settled down after first week I transfered beer into another fermenter without the sediment of course (i didn't filter it or anything, just made sure no crap on the bottom was transfered). Then after a few hours it started to bubble again for over 10 days now (and specific gravity is the same now for 4 days)..Now its down to about a bubble per minute.. when should I bottle???

and second-order question: if I do bottle now, should I pitch in extra yeast for carbonation? I ask because given that yeast is still eating away in that secondary, maybe it will carry on in the bottles as long as i add some priming sugar that is..

hmm..

what do you guys think?

 

[ChshreCat]

If it's at your expected FG and is stable, you can bottle if you want to. There are many things that can cause bubbles besides fermentation.

No need to add yeast unless you filter, do some serious long and cold cold-crashing or leave it in secondary for months. There's plenty of yeast in there still.

 

[akardam]

ok thanks for quick reply!

the thing is that final gravity is a bit high (around 1.02).. it was suppose to go down to 1.01-1.015.. porter-like beer.. that's another reason i'm confused because it doesn't seem to be stuck given that it is still bubbling.. i know that it can mean various things, such as co2 in beer that is coming out, etc.. but still.. anyway, i'll bottle a few and see how it goes..

cheers mate!

 

[SumnerH]

Is the FG stable? Measure it, then measure it again 2 days later. If it's the same, you're probably okay to bottle.

The airlock is there to let air out, not to measure anything.

 

[ChshreCat]

Was this made mostly with LME? Some LMEs have a higher percentage of unfermentables. I know that with some of mine that use a lot of LME they'll finish a bit high. You might want to make sure it's not just stalled out and give it a bit more time, but it could also just be done.

 

[akardam]

In fact it isn't a extract beer, I did an all-grain one based on pale ale and speciality grains (munich-special belgian-roasted barley) that may account for the 'unfermentables'.. or then again it may be a stuck fermentation.. it just bubbles constantly very very slow. I have this fear because I bottled once a beer that I thought had finished at an OG of 1.02 and then during summer time they exploded like grenades!

 

[snowveil]

what temperature did you mash at?

 

[BioBeing]

What was the gravity when you racked to secondary? Is it possible you took it off the yeast before they were done?

 

[ChshreCat]

If it's been chilly, you might try warming it up a few degrees and rousing the yeast. Most likely, it's just where it's going to finish at.

+1 on what BioBeing said. You really don't want to go to secondary until you hit your FG and/or are stable.

 

[Jethro]

What yeast did you use? Some Belgian strains are known to ferment a real long time and will ferment down to real low FG. If it was me, I would let it ferment for as long as possible. It's not such a big deal when kegging, but it only takes a few gravity points to produce bottle bombs.