Bottling or leaving it for another month?

[webtopf]

Hey everyone. I'm in a bit of a difficult spot right now. I am going on vacation tomorrow for a month. My plan was to bottle my beer today to have it ready to drink when I come back. But yesterday I found out that the fermentation is still not done after two weeks. OG 1.040, last reading 1.019 (ongoing fermentation), expected FG 1.010.

So my two options are:

A) I could bottle today and reduce the priming sugar, or leave it out entirely to not over carbonate.

B) I could just leave it for another full month in the primary. My following question here would be: if I leave it for a full month, will the yeast still be alive to bottle carbonate the beer?


Details of the process:

I brewed the batch (5 gal) 13 days ago. It's a golden ale with an OG of 1.040, US-5 safale. Previous batches with the same recipe ended up at 1.010. For this one the gravity read 1.020 yesterday. I saw the temperature in the room during fermentation fell from about 21C to 18C. (70F to 64F) So I suspected it was too cold and put it in a warmer spot overnight. Today it seems like the yeast picked up again and after 24 hours, the gravity reads 1.019. (refractometer) There are very infrequent bubbles. ~every one minute.

From the research I did it looks like from 1.019 to 1.010 I shouldn't have to worry about bottle bombs, but it could really mess with the flavors and carbonation.

Thanks!

 

[kh54s10]

Are you correcting the gravity reading taken by the refractometer for the presence of alcohol? If not your gravity is not at 1.019

If you have corrected, I would leave it. Getting the proper amount of priming sugar when you are not sure of where FG will end up is like shooting in the dark.

IMO, if you bottle at 1.019 and it finishes at 1.010 and you don't guess very well on the amount of priming sugar you really SHOULD worry about bottle bombs.....

BTW I ferment US-05 at 64 as a rule. It ferments just fine at that temperature, but I don't really know how long it takes. I always go at least 14 days. Often it gets quite a bit longer due to procrastination for packaging.

 

[webtopf]

Wow, I did not know i had to do that. This is my first time using the refractometer. After correction it looks like the FG is actually 1.008, so i should be fine bottling it with the planned amount of priming sugar. Thank you so much!