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

Yeah basically. I think a blowoff tube probably allows a bit more oxygen ingress, so if you're worried about that an airlock is marginally better. However I've had plenty of fermentations where I never bothered to switch for a variety of reasons and it has generally worked out fine.

Just so you know, the reason for a blowoff tube is that the beer might foam up and "blow out" the airlock (this has happened to me... probably to most people on this forum). A blowoff tube accommodates the foam better without getting clogged, building up pressure, etc. If you know the foam won't be a problem, you can just use an airlock throughout. Or some people just loosely cover the fermenter with foil or something until fermentation calms down, and then install an airlock. Any of these approaches is fine once you've figured out how your fermentations typically go, but be careful switching recipes or yeasts, they can produce different results.

 

FWIW, the first two batches I did were Brooklyn brewshop 1-gal kits. EveryDay IPA, followed a couple of weeks later by the next kit...I don’t recall what that was. We were drinking the 1st one in 2 or 3 weeks. The next batch was a couple of months later, and was 5-gallons; not a Brooklyn kit, but a SMASH ale.

At some point afterward, I discovered this forum. Immensely helpful.

Have fun and Cheers!!

 

In a one gallon batch the fermentation should finish pretty quickly, but you'll want to leave the beer on the yeast for a few days to clean up the fermentation by-products. Then it's time to bottle!

 

You need a measurement from before fermenting if you want to calculate the ABV accurately, but to check that its stabilized you just need to take a couple of readings a day or two apart and make sure that they're a) the same and b) not ridiculously high.

 

I just use a sanitised mug. If you're worried about losing too much, experiment with water beforehand and work out exactly how much of a mugful you need to get enough in the hydrometer tube.

Personally I've never thought that saving the small amount of beer in a hydrometer tube is worth the risk of infection from pouring it back. If you don't want to waste too much, don't take your first reading until you're fairly sure that you're done fermenting anyway. If you don't want to waste any, drink the sample once you've taken the reading.

 

You can get a wine thief, or use a thoroughly cleaned and sanitized turkey baster to draw a sample. It'll take about 6 - 8 ounces of beer in the hydrometer jar.
I wouldn't pour it back in the fermentor....but I would taste it.

To add to @Dave_S comment, I originally put the hydrometer in the jar and filled with water until it floated, then made a mark on the jar with a sharpie.

You'll need the temperature of the beer when the gravity reading is taken. If it's different from the temp the hydrometer was calibrated at, there are online tools for making the conversion. Your hydrometer might (should) have come with instructions for that.instructions for that.

Edited to insert link to hydro adjustment.

 

I personally use a turkey baster to extract a sample for a hydrometer reading but what you suggest here should work too. Just make sure to sanitize your sample extraction tool prior to taking the sample.

If you decide to do this make sure that everything that makes contact with the sample it thoroughly sanitized. It is my practice to not add the sample back in but I can understand why you might be motivated to do so given the small size of your batch.

Cheers!

 

This is a tricky situation and you should probably take a hydrometer reading. But I'm going to make a heretical argument that it's not really necessary for a lot of beers.

What it comes down to is, have the yeast eaten all of the carbohydrates that they're going to eat? And the answer is, with a standard ale yeast you can typically tell just by looking. This is not true for saison yeasts, Brettanomyces, or other "var. diastaticus" yeasts, which slowly consume longer-chain carbohydrates, and for those yeasts I would generally take a gravity reading before bottling. But for a standard yeast like US-05 or Wyeast 1084 or something like that, unless there is something unusual about the fermentation it is generally very easy to tell when it is done.

So for me a typical batch brewed with a "clean yeast" (non-saison, non-Brett) goes like this: Pitch the yeast on day B. Observe vigorous airlock (or blowoff tube) activity from day B+1 through day B+2 or B+3. Observe dwindling airlock activity through day B+4 or B+5, and negligible airlock activity thereafter. (You sometimes get a bubble or two from temperature changes etc., so it's not literally zero activity, but it's basically nil.) Bottle on day B+14 (no gravity reading yet). Take a gravity reading after bottling so I can calculate ABV. (To be clear, I take the gravity reading with a sample that hasn't been mixed in with the priming sugar. I use a refractometer so it just takes a couple of drops.) I had bottle bombs once, but I'm quite certain it was due to poor mixing of the priming solution, not an incomplete fermentation.

Now you'll notice the B+14 in that sequence. Two weeks is a lot of time, I'm generally not bottling early enough for primary fermentation to be unfinished. At B+7, I think I would generally be safe, but I rarely put it to the test. (When I have, it's never been a problem.)

But you're looking at B+4 maybe. So that's the problem here, you are pushing the timeline aggressively to get this in the bottle. In your favor, though, is the fact that it's a one gallon batch - that should speed it up a bit. Also, this isn't a barleywine or RIS or something crazy like that, which could take longer and stress the yeast.

So long story short I think there are two options here:

1. In 3-4 days take a gravity reading with a hydrometer, and if it's below 1.014 or so just go ahead and bottle. Maybe the true FG is 1.012, but two gravity points isn't going to blow up the bottles. And I would be very surprised if you hadn't reached terminal gravity in that amount of time.

2. In 3-4 days, unless it is obviously still fermenting (it won't be), just bottle without wasting the beer on a gravity reading. Then be careful with the bottles, don't hold them right up to your eye or anything, but there's a very high likelihood the beer will be fine.

To be clear, I would go with option 1 given your very short timeline. But I would not think of option 2 as totally crazy.

I should also emphasize that I am very much giving aggressive, non-standard advice here. Not at all what most people on this forum would advise. So take it with a grain of salt. But in my experience, for clean, non-saison yeast, with a normal, healthy fermentation, there's not a lot of need for a final gravity reading.

 

Just to be clear here folks.

We are walking a first beer through a 14 day brew schedule.
Without an OG.

How is this Beer Advocacy?
Cheers

 

Well, in post #6 I stated:

"I would recommend that you not rush things here. Primary Ferment for the time it takes, bottle the beers and if at the two week mark you would like to 'road test' a bottle with your friend then this is an option but it would be prudent to caution your friend that the beers will be 'green' at this point and will be improved in another few weeks."

The above reads like proper Homebrewing Advocacy to me.

Cheers!

 

What is the point of an OG? For a refractometer you need an OG to input into the calculator. But if you're using a hydrometer, what does an OG tell you that you really need to know? For my very first beer I inadvertently measured the OG at a time when my beer was stratified, leading to an erroneously low gravity reading. And yet the beer turned out fine. How can that be? It's because the OG doesn't inform any subsequent decisions that the brewer has to make.

Sure, there are reasons you might want to know. For instance, you might be trying to improve your mash efficiency. Or you might be worried about the ABV of your beer, not wanting to over-consume or whatever. Neither of those factors seems likely to apply here.

I don't think we should let the perfect be enemy of the good. This guy is going into the process with eyes open about the limitations he faces. We've told him to have some backup beer in case this one doesn't turn out so great. But the idea that you just shouldn't brew unless you can measure your OG seems excessive to me.

 

This looks lacking after rereading.
Hydrometer in jar, add water until it floats, remove hydrometer, mark the water level with a sharpie. That will be your beer fill-to line.
This one is is probably the cheapest setup I've seen that includes a jar.