I brewed a dubbel on 9/24. Active fermentation began ~12hours later and ended 9/27. I've been letting the yeast clean up since then. How much longer should I leave it in the fermenter before bottling?
That seems like a fast fermentation period, especially for a dubbel. Did you ferment kind of on the warmish side of 70 degrees? Even if you've hit your FG I'd tend to want to wait a full two weeks on this beer. Did you taste the sample from your FG reading?
I do 1.25gal batches so my fermentations tend to go quick. I'd say this is my longest by a quite a bit. Fermentation was on the cool side - 65 temp on the fermometer. Its possible I over-pitched since it was my first time using liquid yeast. Everything seems on-target taste/smell-wise so far, I just wanted to know if I should give it a week or two more to condition before bottling.
If you pitched an entire liquid yeast pack then you did indeed 'over-pitch'. It will be interesting to see how much esters was produced in this ferment. My personal recommendation is to permit one more week of conditioning time. In all likelihood you had a very healthy ferment considering your pitch amount but one more week won't hurt (and it may be beneficial?). I have a 5 gallon Dubbel that completed signs of fermentation a few days ago; I will let this batch 'sit' for one week before bottling. Cheers!
I did not pitch an entire pack - probably more like 75% of one. The OG was 1.070 and the yeast production date was 9/11. It's just so hard to measure partial packs of yeast.
Yeah, it is indeed tough to gauge that aspect. Needless to say it is the cell count which is of most importance; maybe 3/4ths of the liquid equates to 3/4ths of the cell count? Cheers!
You could. It really all comes down to how much you personally value precision here. It just may be you will be very happy with how your present batch turns out? The reality is that there are plenty of other variables when it comes to fermentation: The aeration/oxygenation amount prior to pitching the yeast Yeast nutrition (did you add some yeast nutrient?) Fermentation temperature (maybe a warmer fermentation temperature like 70-72 degrees would be preferable to you?) Specific yeast strain selection (which yeast strain did you buy?) etc. As a homebrewer you get to select and 'turn' all of the above 'knobs' to suit your personal tastes and goals. Cheers!
