i am making my first batch of beer, the kit is american amber i did a full boil, my primery fermented with lot of bubbles for 3 days on day 5 it was slow enough that i transfered to the secondary it has been 5 days in the plastic carboy, air loc was bubble slow and now it seems to have stopped. my plan was to leave it in carboy for 2 weeks. my question i am not sure of is the OG was 1.050, SG when transfer to carboy was 1.010 today 5 days later i am still at 1.010, FG for my kit is 1.012, the small bubbles in the carboy have seemed to stop. Is it ok to let it sit at 68degrees for one more week and then keg? i am in no rush just want the best taste.
5 days primary seems kind of quick. if the hydrometer reading is stable for 5 days, you can bottle it. Sitting another week will not hurt.
Yea, the extra time should have been spent in the primary. No need to rush to secondary, if fact, lots of people primary only.
But even if the bubbles stop, you need more time in primary…at least two weeks
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thanks for the quick replies, i feel better now let it sit, for one more week the gavity readings are what have me a little puzzled.
Even if your primary fermentation wasn’t quite complete when you racked it to your secondary, there’s still enough yeast left in suspension to continue fermenting in the secondary… It will just take longer for the remaining yeast to clean itself up, etc… 68 degrees in secondary is plenty warm to allow this to happen, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Next time, just primary for at least two weeks before you rack it secondary and save yourself the “is my beer baby going to be ok” worries 
Also, I wouldn’t use a plastic carboy as a secondary fermentation vessel. Believe it or not, oxygen permeates plastic and can create off flavors in your beer. The plastic one is fine for a primary due to the CO2 during fermentation creating positive pressure in there and keeping the oxygen out. But I’d use a glass one for sure as a secondary (which you don’t even have to do btw unless you’re dry hopping or making a lager).
:cheers:
[quote=“panduji68”]Even if your primary fermentation wasn’t quite complete when you racked it to your secondary, there’s still enough yeast left in suspension to continue fermenting in the secondary… It will just take longer for the remaining yeast to clean itself up, etc… 68 degrees in secondary is plenty warm to allow this to happen, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Next time, just primary for at least two weeks before you rack it secondary and save yourself the “is my beer baby going to be ok” worries
Also, I wouldn’t use a plastic carboy as a secondary fermentation vessel. Believe it or not, oxygen permeates plastic and can create off flavors in your beer. The plastic one is fine for a primary due to the CO2 during fermentation creating positive pressure in there and keeping the oxygen out. But I’d use a glass one for sure as a secondary (which you don’t even have to do btw unless you’re dry hopping or making a lager).
:cheers: [/quote]
+1
I’ve jumped on the ‘no secondary bandwagon’. I have two 5 gallon glass carboys that will only get used if I’m going to bulk age the beer for an extended period, if I just need to free up a primary to brew more beer, or as a primary for a 3 gal batch. Primary for 3 weeks, take gravity readings the last few days to make sure it’s finished then bottle or keg it.
i was told by the store owner it would be better to get the beer off the yeast cake once it was done, and to look to see if the foam on top dropped down, when i open primary there was just liquid on top and my SG was at the final for what the instructions said so he said transfer it. is there any truth to getting any bad taste letting it sit for a week after fermintation has stopped? thanks for the help i want to learn how to make a great beer.
Conventional wisdom is that it has to sit on the cake for months for off flavors. You’ll hear plenty of first hand experience from guys that say they let it sit for months and have no issues. Moving after a week is just not necessary and is more likely to cause other issues due to fermentation not being finished. Most ales will finish fermenting in a couple of weeks, so it’s good to leave ales 3-4 weeks in the primary before moving to a secondary. If you’re kegging, you can skip secondary all together and condition in your keg.
For your beer, 10 days is still pretty soon so the flavor might not be right but you’re at FG so you could move it to the keg and let it condition another couple of weeks.
Leaving your beer on the yeast cake in the primary for 3 or 4 weeks won’t hurt a thing. As was said above by mvsawyer, these off flavors people talk about tend to happen after MONTHS on the yeast cake, not a few weeks. I often don’t secondary, but sometimes I do… Just depends on the beer and what I’m trying to do to it. I don’t keg, so sometimes I will rack my beer to a secondary and cold crash it prior to bottling because I feel I get better clarity cold crashing it off of the yeast cake. But it has nothing to do with any off flavors. :cheers:
I always leave the beer to sit for about a week after the bubbles/fermentation stops
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