ajwillys said:I've never used one of these but I've thought many times about using a fast ferment, especially for beers/yeasts that are finicky and might end at a somewhat unpredictable gravity.
I wouldn't assume that what's happening in your cylinder is the same thing that's happening in your fermentor.
I've used them for years to check gravity progress.
You don't need to take a gravity reading every day.
The four main reasons to take readings. 1) To establish whether you hit your intended og mark in the beginning, and to establish when fermentation is complete (This is usually done by taking 2 readings over a 3 day period.
2) To determine ABV of the beer, og-fg x 131....
3) To diagnose whether you have fermenetation or if fermentation is stuck, if you think you have a problem.
4) If you're planning to rack to a secondary (which not every brewer does these days, some opt for an extended month long primary, then bottle or keg.
Fermentation can take anywhere from a week to 2 to actually complete, so unless you don't trust your yeast, regardless of whether you're racking to secondary or not, I recommend not taking the second set of readings til day 10 and day 12 or day 12 and day 14, then racking to secondary. This gives the yeast time to finish their job, and lets the yeast clean up some of the byproducts of fermentation that leads to off flavors.
If you're opting to leave your beer in primary for a month, like I do, then there's no point in taking the final reading til bottling day, to let you know for sure if the beer is finished, and what the abv is.
Otherwise the only time to take one, is if you think there's a problem...people think an airlock is a fermentation gauge for instance, when sometimes it NEVER bubbles, or they think fermentation is done because their airlock stopped, or an airlock in secondary starts bubbling, and they think it's infected (when it could just be because the cat rubbed up against the fermenter, or the ambient temp has warmed up and gas is expanding...THAT'S when you take a reading, to tell you whether anything's wrong or not.
Otherwise, just leave the beer alone, and trust that everything is fine....which 99.99% of the time it is.
You could just dump the hops straight into the fermenter without a bag. Then rack the beer off to your bottling bucket. Remove the beer from the hops instead of removing the hops from the beer. Timing is the key here. If you want a 5 day dry hop and a 2 day cold crash, you need to add the hops 7 days before bottling day.
I have never attempted a 2 week dry hop at room temperature. I have at serving temperature and everything was fine. There is a substantiated fear of vegetal or grassy flavors attributed to dry hopping too long but I don't think 2 weeks is too long. Seems like several people have done 2 weeks with no problem here.
That is what I would do (dry hop the last week before bottling).
I read those posts, thanks. I like doing a month fermentation. That said should I be dry hopping the last week of the month instead of the second week?
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