OK. Racked from primary to secondary yesterday. OG 1.052. and yesterday after 8 days 1.020. 2 questions. The beer is still really cloudy (its a brown ale) I am sure it just needs more time to clear. What can I do before bottling to clear it up a bit. Or will it do it on its own Second. Should I move to a warmer spot for a few days to re-activate the yeast? Its about 64 where it sits now. The beer was still really sweet tasting (I drank some out of the thief jar) BTW. after reading MANY posts on the subject I was not going to rack but leave it in primary however I wanted to make another batch. Thanks
IMO you racked too soon, and should have waited until attenuation was finished or nearly finished. The reason it's so cloudy is that there are still al lot of yeast in suspension. The reason it tastes sweet is that there is still a significant amount of sugars in the beer, which is why the yeast are hanging around. Once fermentation is finished, time and gravity will clear the beer. The thing you can do before bottling to help it (stay) clear is let it finish sitting on a high enough table so that you can rack to your bottling bucket without moving the fermenter again. It would not hurt to get that temp a little higher.
Also - depending upon your recipe and mash temp (if all grain?) - it may actually be done. Forward the recipe.
Warm it up to help fermentation finish. The cold crash it to drop (much of) the yeast out of suspension.
I should have provided more detail. I racked to a secondary carboy. 5 gallons. Also this was the NB Caribou slobber extract kit. Thanks
Warming up the temp a few degrees should increase yeast activity and, ideally, drive your fermentation to completion. I never brewed this kit. My understanding is it is a pretty popular kit, so probably has with no serious design flaws. I didn't see a recommended final gravity for the kit at the Northern Brewer website. They recommend using WYeast Northwest Ale (liquid) yeast or Danstar Windsor (dry) yeast. Windsor is not the most attenuative yeast ; I can't seem to find info on the expected attenuation range for Windsor. However, you only have 62% attenuation and I would expect Windsor might give you something more like 66%? The rated attenuation for the NW Ale liquid yeast is 67-71%. If you go with the mean, 69%, your FG. So if you were 1.052 original gravity, you might expect your FG to be around 1.016. If you used liquid yeast, your attenuation may hinge a bit on whether you made a starter (always a good idea with liquid). I imagine Caribou Slobber is a sweetish beer (Moose Drool is); it ought to drop a few more points for you but don't expected it to get very dry.
Thanks for the help. Yes. I used the dry yeast. I hydrated it the way I have read to do it. Early fermentation was vigorous!. My understanding is the final gravity should be what you said. About 1.016 or so. I guess all is well and like most noobs I need to relax and have a beer! Thanks again. These forums give great info.
stop racking to a secondary. it's very rare that this needs to happen. let the yeast do its job. invest in 5 more buckets you'll need them!
Right. I was thinking about that. You know leaving it in the fermenting bucket there is all that head space but as long as I NEVER open the lid that space should not have anything but CO2 in it correct? No oxygen=no oxidizing. Buckets are "cheap" This is my "first go" so I wanted to follow NB recipe exactly. I have 3 more kits to do this winter so I guess off to my LHBS for buckets! Again thanks.
I brewed this extract kit last May. Here are some data points FWIW: I used the Wyeast Northwest Ale 1332, SG was 1.052. I transferred to secondary after 2 weeks, checked gravity at 1.018. At 1 month, I kegged it, FG at 1.016. Since this was May-June in coastal SC, my room temp was probably a warm 75F throughout the whole process. I know the OP said dry yeast was used, but raising the temp to finish it out would be good.
