Beer Forum

Well I am currently brewing my first batch of delicious beer (a Irish Red Ale) and last night while syphoning it into the secondary fermenter I took a gravity reading and found that it was at the suggested finishing gravity of 1.10 (started around 1.40). Should I be bottling right now or am I going to be ok letting it settle and maybe clarify a bit more in the secondary? It has only been 8 days since the boil.

Any help would be much appreciated!!!

Your probably good but a few more day's wont hurt. I usually leave mine for 10 to 14 days. I have bottled in 5 days in hot weather but it was not good. As long as your hydrometer readings are the same for 2 days go ahead and bottle. Congratulation's on your first brew, enjoy the fruits of your labor.

I assume you mean the gravity was 1.010, not 1.10? If it is really 1.010 that is pretty low already, and you shouldn't see it go lower. I would normally leave the beer on the yeast at least a couple of days after the airlock activity is done (maybe bump the temp control up a couple of degrees for those last two days), and if the gravity was that low I wouldn't see any benefit for waiting longer to bottle. 8 days for a 1.040 OG is a decent amount of time to hit terminal gravity if you have the right amount of healthy yeast at the right temperature. You have to do things right to get that level of attenuation, nicely done. Enjoy.

The yeast do things that don't change the gravity, at the end of fermentation. They reduce esters and fusels that are created early in fermentation, among other things. It's usually a good idea to keep the beer in the fermentor for a bit for that conditioning phase, and it doesn't hurt.

Also keep in mind that the hazier the beer is when you bottle, the thicker your sediment layer will be once it has conditioned in the bottle. Be patient, give it more time to settle (or crash/fine it) and you'll end up with something that is easier to pour without chunks of yeast dropping into the glass.

You should always let your beer stay in primary for around 12-14 days providing the OG is not too large (of which a longer primary would benefit). As pfooti said the yeast reabsorb chemicals produced during fermentation and improve your beer during this conditioning phase. It is almost as important as the initial phase of fermentation where sugars are converted to alcohol. During the conditioning, diacetyl, acetaldehyde and other pre-cursors are reabsorbed by the yeast cells and help clean up the beer while greatly improving the flavor.

Thanks for all the advice!