Once your new beer is in the fermenter how often do you check on it? I seal my fermenter in a refrigeration box so I just check the temp on the thermowell. After 2 weeks I open it up and check the gravity.
If you have the luxury of temp control I'd say why not? I have been babysitting my first couple of batches because I want to get it right. I'll just check the temp on my fermenter and move it if I need to. I check my gravity after two weeks then a couple days after to see if it has moved.
Pretty much what I do. Though the time before the first check may be more or less, depending on the yeast strain and size of the beer.
For a normal beer, I simply ignore it for two to three weeks. Experience tells me it's done after only a few days, so I don't bother checking it until the day I keg it. And that's just for my notes, not to see if it's done. Bigger beers sit in the fermenter longer - at least a month or two. I then keg it as my schedule allows.
Weeellllllllll.... My fermenters are kept in swamp coolers in the basement near the laundry machines. So I at least check on them for the first day or so to see if primary fermentation has started (or filled the locks with gunk). After that, it's check on them after 3 weeks or so (depending on when I have time to keg).
I do the same- set it and forget it. Sometimes I don't bother with gravity readings at all on the standard beers I always seem to make. I pull a sample, taste it- then I keg it if it is ready. The rest I take a reading or two. After a while you just get a feel for time, condition, yeast strain, attenuation in terms of flavor, etc.
It depends, for most beers I set it and forget it. But there are times when I want to warm the beer up after initial stages of brewing for either a diacetyl rest or just to more quickly finish up the fermentation so I can reuse fermenter for another batch. For these I'll check gravity at 3 days to see where it is. For odd balls like Saisons, sours and imperials I'll check on some schedule like weekly or every two weeks or monthly. I find my auto siphon to be an easy to use wine thief.
I check pretty frequently during those first couple days, partly to make sure the temperature's where I want it and to make sure the airlock's not getting clogged, but also just because I like looking at primary fermentation. What can I say? It just looks cool. After that, set it and forget it. I usually take a reading just before kegging, just to confirm/record the FG, but I hardly look at it from primary till drinking time.
I really only look at it the first week or so just to see how fermentation is going and if my blow-off can be changed over to an airlock. I then let it sit for a total of 3 weeks and keg. I don't bother doing serial gravity readings and never have. If I'm brewing a lager I go for an additional week but in my experience my lagers are also done in nearly the same time as my ales (with the exception of lagering of course).
Beers taste better if you visit them at least once a day...much like house plants grow better if you talk to them.
I generally don't open the fermenter and check gravity until activity is finished but I'll visually check it out (I use clear better bottles) as often as I can during primary to make sure it does get stuck or anything. If it goes into secondary or on oak or anything like that, then I put it in the dark and forget about it.
Set it and forget it would be nice, but like ljkeats I have swamp coolers that need some TLC. After the first 72-96 hours I just let it go, gets to about 70-72F. A week or two or three, depending on style and the need for some homebrew, I will keg it. Often neglect to take FG readings.
i leave the lid on my bucket open during primary so will usually check it within 24hrs to make sure krausen is up, and depending on the beer and if I want to reuse the yeast, will usually scoop krausen ~72hrs into fermentation, then seal up. So more of a high maintenance brewer...
forget it until your ready to bottle or keg. Ill check gravity once, at kegging or bottling. Right now, Im trying a grain to glass in 10 days kolsch american wheat
I usually look into my chest freezer to check on my carboy because a nice big krausen is a beautiful thing, but when it comes to kegging I'm a set it and forget it kinda guy
If it's a new recipe I'll check daily until the krausen drops, just to see how it goes. Actuallly, since I have manual temp control I do check every day for the first few days of fermentation just to make sure a very active ferment doesn't drive up the temps too high.
Sometimes I play with temperature ramps. Pitch low, finish high. If it seems like it is done fermenting after a week or so, I may check gravity and flavor. My recent CAP was a bit of a nuisance in that it took a while for diacetyl to clear up. I checked it 3 times between week 1.5 and 3.5 and before the flavor subsided. Now it's in a keg, lagering.
I'm back to swirling my carboy ever so often. I'm not sure if I'm putting yeast back into suspension but I'm am releasing CO2 from the yeast that is. It's one of the positive things that a stir plate does. I also do temp control so I'm raising the temp normally once. If it's a beer that I'm going to dry hop I'll start that about day four. About day two I remove the tin foil and put on a proper airlock. Day seven I turn off the music and let the yeast sleep.
