HELP- Kegging before fermentation is complete

[galwaybrewer]

I am brewing an apple ale and it was in the primary fermenter for 6 days and I transferred it to the glass carboy 9 days ago. I want to keg it for my new years party but it's still fermenting and the specific gravity reading I took today is 1.022 and the FG is supposed to be 1.015 on the high end. If I were to keg it today and force carb it until Wednesday will the beer finish fermenting while in the keg?

I am trying to decide if it's close enough or if it is better to just accept that it won't be ready by new years and let it finish on it's own. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Gravity, shmavity. I say keg it!

 

[duboman]

If its not finished fermenting it will taste sweeter than it should. In addition if you allow the keg to stay in range for the yeast while you force carb it will continue fermenting and most likely over carbonate with the co2 produced as it finishes.

The choice is yours, personally I don't rush my beer

 

[jahdub]

Why did you transfer it to a glass carboy before it was finished?

 

[newbiewinemaker]

Why did you transfer it to a glass carboy before it was finished?

I believe it is called Secondary Fermentation :cross: The instructions in the kit from midwest gives you a choice for secondary fermentation after the first week. We went ahead and put this in the keg on Sunday night. The temperature range in the room that the keg is in has been around 35 to 40 degrees so that was below the range of the yeast. The SG was pretty close to the FG anyways. It may produce a little sweeter but it is an Apple Ale. However it may be, beer is beer and I am sure it will be drinkable!

 

[galwaybrewer]

If its not finished fermenting it will taste sweeter than it should. In addition if you allow the keg to stay in range for the yeast while you force carb it will continue fermenting and most likely over carbonate with the co2 produced as it finishes.

The choice is yours, personally I don't rush my beer

I ended up kegging it but I kept it in a cold environment (below 40 degrees) so that way it ended up cold crashing which hopefully prevented the over carbonation. I will be tapping the keg tonight so hopefully it turns out well!

 

[jahdub]

I believe it is called Secondary Fermentation :cross: The instructions in the kit from midwest gives you a choice for secondary fermentation after the first week. We went ahead and put this in the keg on Sunday night. The temperature range in the room that the keg is in has been around 35 to 40 degrees so that was below the range of the yeast. The SG was pretty close to the FG anyways. It may produce a little sweeter but it is an Apple Ale. However it may be, beer is beer and I am sure it will be drinkable!

Secondary fermentation is a thing, and I'm sure your apple ale will come out just fine, but any transferring too early will have a negative impact on your brew. 6 days is a really short time to be on the yeast. Once you transfer it, everything is going to slow down. There's no real reason to transfer it at 6 days, unless you know it is done fermenting, which usually doesn't happen. If you've confirmed fermentation is done, then go ahead and transfer.

The only legitimate reason to transfer at 6 days is if you don't want the beer to fully ferment on the yeast you started with and want to use something else to finish the ferment, ie. adding brett or some other odd yeast or you just don't ever want it to fully ferment, because you want to kill the yeast via whichever method you choose and force carb in a keg, to leave residual sweetness in a beer.