First timer: how to brew in 14 days or less?

Based on this brewers experience, having never seen wort turn into beer, the FG can not be related to anything. Is this beer ready in 7 days at 1.010? 1.020? And then we are going to prime and be ready to drink in another week? Come on.

I just don't think speed brewing is a thing, not for me or anyone else. That is an opinion.

Speed brewing on the very first batch, where we are going to get an unfinished beer in the best of circumstances and possibly worse? That's not advancing the craft in my estimation (It is too late at this point but, don't say I didn't warn you!)

As always I advise for brewers to do what they think is appropriate based on their experience etc. But that is not the case here.
Cheers

 

Really?

You can purchase an inexpensive hydrometer and plastic jar for about 10 bucks.

Refractometers cost over 50 bucks.

Buy what you want here. But you need to learn how to correct values wrt the refractometer:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/how-to-determine-your-refractometers-wort-correction-factor/

Cheers!

 

Yeah that's right. You could sort of fudge it by guessing your OG and plugging that into an online calculator, but it would be at best a ballpark number. I love my refractometer and I would recommend it as a good purchase if you're going to be brewing much, but for your present purposes a refractometer would not be the ideal tool.

[Edited to add: I guess what you could do is take a refractometer reading on like day 4 and again on day 5. If they are the same, then regardless of the number (which will seem high because it won't be adjusted), you'll know you're good to go. But to me this is inferior to the hydrometer approach I described above.]

 

When I order online I do so from homebrew vendors like MoreBeer. The cheapest refractometer from them is 60 bucks:

https://www.morebeer.com/products/brewing-refractometer-dual-scale.html

I do not own a refractometer (I have solely used an hydrometer) so I can not provide you with any specific advise here (e.g., which one is "good").

Cheers!

P.S. An inexpensive hydrometer:

https://www.morebeer.com/products/triple-scale-hydrometer.html
Cheers!

 

I can see the logic of just saying "no" rather than indulging an attempt that is unlikely to work, and in the past I've sometimes advised people to drop a bad idea. Everyone's going to draw the line in a different place. To me, getting a medium-gravity beer from grain to glass in 2 weeks is a lot more sensible than some of the other practices we see on this forum, but as I said everyone's going to draw the line differently.

 

It’s doubtful the yeast finished their work in 24 hrs, even though we don’t know the viability of the yeast or how efficient your mash was.
It’d be good to have something (refractometer, hydrometer) to take a gravity reading by about Thursday or Friday, and again a day or two after. What you’re looking for is an unchanged reading over 2-3 days. That’s the way to know it’s okay to get ready for safe bottling.

But there’s other stuff still happening in your fermentor………
https://www.morebeer.com/articles/conditioning

 

The link in my other post addresses that question pretty good, in addition to some other questions that you haven't asked but will likely come to mind.

 

Do not bottle until primary fermentation is complete (at a minimum until the final gravity is reached). The yeast get to decide when things are done; forget about the calendar.

Cheers!

 

Incidentally, @riptorn, I assume you were a fan of the man who inspired your name. It's a big loss, he was by far the funniest actor on The Larry Sanders Show (Jeffrey Tambor being a distant second). He will be missed.

 

Yessir. He was a diverse talent. I especially enjoyed him in the remake of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and, perhaps surprisingly, the goofy movie Dodgeball.

Edited to add: To keep this in accord with the guidelines, he was also in a film named "Beer".

 

By the way, if you find after a brew or two that you're worrying about the amount of delicious beer that you're losing to hydrometer samples, then unless you're really constrained for space and equipment I'd probably take that as an indication that you should scale up to a bigger batch size, not switch to a refractometer...

 

I use a refractometer (one of the cheap $18 ones you linked) and like it a lot. I also have a refractometer and only really use it for confirmation of the refractometer readings when they seem wonky (which is very rarely).

 

You use two refractometers, one to verity the other?