Newbie ferm question

The gallon kit recipes typically recommend waiting two weeks before bottling. If you can wait another week (follow @uncdeo’s advice and wait three weeks), your patience will likely be rewarded.

After visible fermentation is complete (typically 2-4 days after the yeast is pitched), there is a conditioning phase with little visible activity. The kit instructions implicitly allow around 10-12 days for this phase - but as @uberculture suggested earlier, a longer wait can do you no harm.

Chapter 8 of John Palmer’s book, How To Brew has more details on the fermentation process. The 1st edition of the book is online ( http://www.howtobrew.com/ ). If you like what you read, please consider buying the 4th edition.

Good question!

The one gallon kits typically do not come with OG or estimated FG measurements. Online recipe calculators (like brewer’s friend at Beer Recipe Calculator | Brewer's Friend) can be used to calculate these values. The calculations involve basic math - and are not hard to do by hand - tedious at times, but not hard. As a side effect of some tedious work, you’ll know more about your brewing process.

Estimated FG is typically a range, not a single number. The calculation involves OG and estimated attenuation. OG is a single number. Estimated attenuation is typically a range. So FG is often provided as a range.

@wilcolandzaat’s suggestion for a FG of 1.010 - 1.012 seems reasonable. Brewers friend appears to use a default value of 80% for attenuation, so their FG will be a point or so lower.

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