Help with fermentation

Hi just racked my beer into secondary after a week in primary. Last week it measured at 14 bricks. Started bubbling, but seemed to die down a day later. Just transfered and im at 9 bricks. Seems like the yeast may have died out. Would it be ok to add another vial of yeast to secondary? Also i was planning on reusing the yeast from the first batch. Should i bother with it? This is a peanut butter stout just so you know.

won't hurt to wait and try it again. test it day after tomorrow, see if it has gone down any.

if it has, you're good

if it hasn't, then think about a repitch

Could i repitch the same yeast back into the beer?

It sounds like you're using a refractometer to measure FG.. If that's so, you need to know that they are not accurate for that purpose without some additional calculations, and even then I personally haven't found them to be accurate.

Yea its a refractometer, would it be more safe to use a hydrometer? After doing the calculations online it came out to 2.7abv... unless i did it wrong.

Nbates1982 said:

Yea its a refractometer, would it be more safe to use a hydrometer? After doing the calculations online it came out to 2.7abv... unless i did it wrong.

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Lol.. Yeah use a hydrometer and see what you get. I know some people successfully use refractometers, for me their only use is during an all grain brew day, to get a ROUGH idea of preboil gravity. Actually, I've cooled samples and gotten 5-10 gravity points on a hydrometer above what the calibrated refractometer read. It seems that not all sugars in wort show up on the refractometer scale.

Nbates1982 said:

Yea its a refractometer, would it be more safe to use a hydrometer? After doing the calculations online it came out to 2.7abv... unless i did it wrong.

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14 BRIX - 9 Brix
1.056 - 1.022
ABV 4.6%

I would of left it for another week to tak off some more points. 22 would be way to sweet for me atleast. What style were you aiming for?

Thanks guys. I feel alot better. Johnny thanks for the fixing my math... i just transfered the yeast so im gonna do another stout with it. Also im but it in beersmith as a sweet stout looks like its gonna turn out good. Im also going to get a refractometer for final reading.

Don't rack to secondary until you've had a stable FG for 3+ days. Use a calculator to figure FG with a refractometer: http://seanterrill.com/2012/01/06/refractometer-calculator/

If you ever need to repitch, make a starter, pitch at high kraeusen.

Thanks for the link cyclman

Also... whats the best thing to use to take FG samples? Wine thief?

Nbates1982 said:

Thanks guys. I feel alot better. Johnny thanks for the fixing my math... i just transfered the yeast so im gonna do another stout with it. Also im but it in beersmith as a sweet stout looks like its gonna turn out good. Im also going to get a refractometer for final reading.

Click to expand...

I hope you mean a hydrometer rather than refractometer for the final reading.

I have found that my refractometer is more accurate when measuring OG than a triple scale hydrometer for the beers that I brew regularly. With the hydrometer, I can get a reading accurate within 2 points. With the refractometer, I can get a reading that is accurate within 1 point, but this is using Beersmith or Promash to perform the Brix to SG conversions.

To detect when fermentation is complete, I still use the refractometer, taking a sample once every 4 - 7 days. When the Brix reading stays the same for two consecutive samples, fermentation is complete. I then use a finishing hydrometer (which reads from 0.990 to 1.020) to get the true FG.

I tried using Promash several years ago to convert Brix readings to SG after fermentation. The results were all over the place. I recently compared Sean Terrills calculator to Promash and the finishing hydrometer to get a FG reading.
The hydrometer showed a value of 1.01150
Promash translated the final Brix reading to 1.014 (2.5 points off)
Sean Terrills calculator translated the final Brix reading to 1.016 (4.5 points off).
If I want an accurate FG reading, I'll stick with the hydrometer.

-a.

Thanks ajf yea i meant hydrometer. Thanks for all the other tips as well