Questions about primary fermentation.

gosplan

Been in primary for 72 hours now.

Bubbling not as vigorous as yesterday but still some gas moving through airlock.

Gunk up the sides as expected.

Slightly concerned that bubbling has slowed down so much so soon but guess this is expected.

Resisting the urge to mess with it or tske gravity readings already.

All sound normal?

When's a good time to move to secondary?

BeerNut

All is fine. The bubbler tells you nothing useful: ignore it.

Give it a week and take a gravity reading. If you're going to rack to a secondary fermenter you can do it any time after that really, but do you really need a secondary?

The most important thing you can do for the next few days is leave the beer alone. Keep and eye on the temperature in the room, but otherwise don't even go near it.

gosplan

BeerNut wrote: »

All is fine. The bubbler tells you nothing useful: ignore it.

Give it a week and take a gravity reading. If you're going to rack to a secondary fermenter you can do it any time after that really, but do you really need a secondary?

The most important thing you can do for the next few days is leave the beer alone. Keep and eye on the temperature in the room, but otherwise don't even go near it.

Thanks a million.

Secondary is to add cascade.

BeerNut

Why not just add it to the primary?

azzeretti

You will find there are a few contentious issues (batch or fly sparge, hydrate the yeast or not, whirlpool rest or not, no chill V chill etc, etc) in brewing! Another is the need to move to a secondary fermenter at all.

Certain beers fair better when conditioned in secondary and only 5-6 years ago it was standard practice to rack to secondary for nearly all beers.

Personally, unless I am doing a lager or a big beer I don't bother with secondary. You can dry hop in first bucket just fine - just wait until fermentation is finished and whack them in there.

gosplan

Thanks guys. Was planning on doing secondary on the basis that allowing the beer some more time without all the gunk would be a good thing.

So this mightn't be necessary with an IPA?

sharingan

gosplan wrote: »

Been in primary for 72 hours now.

Bubbling not as vigorous as yesterday but still some gas moving through airlock.

Slightly concerned that bubbling has slowed down so much so soon but guess this is expected.

You will find that about 3/4 of the fermentation is done in the first 2 days.

The remaining time of the next 2 to 3 weeks is going to be the yeast cleaning up interim by products and the last of the fermentable sugars.

I was talking this week to a guy making an imperial IPA, where his gravity dropped from 1.068 -> 1.016 in 3 days; that is almost completely attenuated.

Leave it alone.