Post-Fermentation Off-Gassing

[philm63]

Something I’d never thought about – I suppose it was happening every time and I just didn’t notice it.

For my last brew – an IPA – I used Conan (Omega 052) for the first time and it took what I thought was a long time to finish up (8 days for the bubbles to slow down to where I figured it was finishing up) but now I am questioning whether or not it may have been done sooner than I thought, and the activity I was seeing in the blow-off bucket was just the remaining CO2 coming out of solution. This is messing with my dry-hop schedule as I employ 2 additions, the first one during active fermentation, and I am not comfortable with those hops sitting for so long before crashing.

Should I be pulling a sample after 4 or 5 days and degassing it for final gravity measurements? I had not done this before but it sounds reasonable. Thoughts?

 

[VikeMan]

For my last brew – an IPA – I used Conan (Omega 052) for the first time and it took what I thought was a long time to finish up (8 days for the bubbles to slow down to where I figured it was finishing up) but now I am questioning whether or not it may have been done sooner than I thought, and the activity I was seeing in the blow-off bucket was just the remaining CO2 coming out of solution.

Yes, CO2 will continue to off gas until the CO2 in the beer reaches equilibrium with the CO2 in the headspace and the atmosphere.

This is messing with my dry-hop schedule as I employ 2 additions, the first one during active fermentation, and I am not comfortable with those hops sitting for so long before crashing.

Should I be pulling a sample after 4 or 5 days and degassing it for final gravity measurements? I had not done this before but it sounds reasonable. Thoughts?

Yeah, if you want to add hops at a specific point in the fermentation, measuring gravity would be the way to go.