Is this a math question?

[john57]

OK, here’s my dilema. I have a cream ale that has finished primary fermentation . It’s sitting
in a plastic fermenting bucket. I also have an American Ale in another plastic bucket that has
a spout on it. That ale has not yet finished primary fermentation.

I would like to transfer the Ale to another vessel so that I can put the cream ale into the bucket
with the spout so that i can dispense it into bottles.

My question is, can I transfer the Ale even though it hasn’t finished its primary fermentation ?
If so, would I transfer the yeast sludge with it ?

Or, should I just wait another week until the Ale has finished its primary fermentation ?

[brick1083]

If you’re not up for buying another bucket, I’d just wait an extra week. It won’t hurt your beer and then you can get all the bottling out of the way on the same day.

[shadetree]

Buy another bucket and rack the cream ale along with all the sludge. Then in the future, use the bottling bucket for bottling only.

[john57]

Yeah, the reason for the screw up is that I usually keg everything. Then it happened that
I wanted to bottle the cream ale batch ( or maybe half of it) to give to friends in a couple
of weeks.

That would mean transferring the “not-yet ready” ale so that I could use the bucket with spigot.

Thanks for the info. Looks like buddies will just have to wait another week or so.

[wrathius]

You find out who your true friends are when there is no beer.