It says ferment 2 weeks, bottle, let carbonate 2 weeks.
I racked over and my hydro sample was opaque, but lighter than it went in… light amber (the hydro tube was brown when I first sampled). 1.038 (target was 1.043) to 1.007, not bad.
Cloudy as hell.
So I’m adding a secondary stage. And … the airlock is bubbling every 15-20 seconds. This beer is STILL fermenting! I guess that explains why it’s cloudy.
Guess it needs another week, another rack, another sample.
It’s probably just outgassing CO2 from the transfer. Don’t rack it again, just give it a couple of days and take another gravity reading. If it doesn’t change, it’s done.
Nod. It also suddenly occurs to me that I didn’t use any yeast nutrient (forgot that was a thing), so my yeast may be slow. (I also dry pitch, but in the future I’m going to acquire a stir plate and do starters)
Yeast nutrient probably helps, but it’s not a deal breaker if you forget it.
If you’re using dry yeast, which it appears you are, don’t make starters. See www.mrmalty.com for details.
Good to know.
I usually don’t even rehydrate the yeast, just dump the dry packet into the fermenter. It’s always worked for me, but fermentation starts visibly quicker with a few minutes of rehydration.
The site says that dry yeast starters “deplete the reserves that manufacturers work so hard to build into their product,” which is a ridiculous and vague statement (yeast manufacturers don’t build yeast, they breed it; dry yeast should be yeast, not Col. Saunders’ 11 herbs and spices; I can add my own nutrient; etc). On the flip side, there was a thread here about using washed yeast (a process I don’t understand), claiming that the second or third generation seems to produce better beer–with a small packet of yeast raised to a starter, that’s by definition the second or third generation at least…