So I had a thread before about my first beer I brewed and the air lock had no action, well WOOHOO it happened an now it is 5 days later and the action is done, in the insructions I got in the kit it tells me to wait 48 hours and then take the final gravity and bottle... I know I should not take in out the of the bucket for at least another week or two and not in 48hours. My question is do I do the FG at the 48 hours or can I do that in a week or two when we decide to be fermenting? Cheers Nick
If you check FG now it will be pretty close. If you give it another week it may be a point or two closer.
If you have any worry that you didn't have a healthy fermentation and that your yeast might have stalled, then you might want to take it now just to make sure that you are within a few gravity points of your expected final gravity. This way, if you find that you are not, you can rouse the yeast now to get fermentation going again so that it will be done in a week from now. As you get more confident in your process / consistency of your results, you can just wait till you are bottling/kegging to check it.
I sit at least two weeks without touching my beer. I'll take a gravity reading at that point and see where I'm at. It's my understanding that even though fermentation is pretty much done the yeast are still cleaning up things like dicetyl. If it's a bigger beer I may go three weeks before I check.
I'd probably take one this weekend just to satisfy your curiosity. But for first-timers I usually tell them to sample it to see if it tastes good, not so much for FG. You can check FG when you bottle, once you're sure it's done/worth bottling. if it tastes good after a couple weeks, great. If it shows a problem, you can decide what to do about it. if nothing seems amiss, you can bottle in a couple weeks from now, though no hurry... cheers-- --Michael
Truth. I just brewed my first. I took a sample at 7 days and it was coming along well (the kit said 7-10 days fermentation) but there was some diacetyl in the finish. After waiting another week the flavors had been cleaned away. The FG didn't waiver at all between those two samplings either. Everything I've read here is "DON'T RUSH IT" and I'm inclined to agree. Just because it might be done, it doesn't do any harm in waiting another week.
I'm confident that fermentation is complete in a week, so I wait two. I feel safe racking to the keg any time after two weeks have passed. Whenever I can squeeze in ten minutes or so, that's 'bottling' day - three weeks after brew day is pretty typical. Then, and only then, do I check FG. I don't check it to be sure it's done (it is), I check it so I can complete my notes on that batch (I record all the vital statistics). OTOH, if the gravity is significantly higher than I expected (I don't sweat a point or two), I take whatever remedial action I deem necessary - that action could be as simple as enjoying a slightly sweeter beer than I planned.
The risk of packaging too soon is worse than waiting a little longer. "Bad beer anywhere is a threat to beer everywhere." -LBK
