It’s Tuesday, 48 hours after the fermenter was sealed, and the active bubbling in the air lock has already ceased. Though various literature that I’ve read usually states that bubbling can continue for a period from three to seven days, I’ve found 48 hours of bubbling to be pretty consistent for me.

So is the beer ready to bottle already? Nope. Even though the bubbling has stopped, fermenting is still happening. This is something that can be confirmed with the use of the hydrometer. I didn’t take a picture of the Initial Gravity measurement on Sunday, but the reading was 48. The beer will be ready for bottling when the hydrometer reading is around 8 to 12. Today’s reading showed 20:

If I assume that 12 is the upper limit, ready for bottling at that point, then I’m only 8 points of the Hydrometer away - 3/4 of the work has already been done by the yeast in the wort, but the last 1/4 of the work will probably take at least the same amount of time, if not longer, to complete as the first 3/4.

With that in mind, I will be taking another hydrometer reading on Thursday to confirm that the yeast are still active and working. It’s possible for yeast to stop early for any of a number of reasons, but a stuck ferment cycle is usually caused by something pretty severe, such as extreme temperature variation (ten degrees or more).

Seeing the mixture in this state makes beer a little unappetizing. In my own process I toss the whole lot from brew pot into the fermenter, though some people try to separate things such as hops and other bigger solids out when “racking” into the fermenter.

Aside from the floaters, the mixture itself is very cloudy. There’s still a lot of stuff suspended in the mixture - protein solids and other things that aren’t harmful to flavor or anything but make for a cloudy beer. Given time a lot of this stuff will settle out of the beer, but some people use a process called “secondary fermentation” in order to refine their beers flavor and look even further. If I was using a secondary fermentation I’d probably be racking the beer out of the primary fermenter on Thursday, putting the secondary fermenter in the basement to settle and age for a week or two longer before starting the bottling.

Why not just let things sit in the primary fermenter for a couple weeks? The answer to that has to do with the yeast in the solution - there’s a lot in there right now because I made sure the beer was extra fertile ground for them Sunday night. Not only was there a lot of food, there was a lot of oxygen suspended in the water. This encouraged the yeast to multiply. When the oxygen was exhausted, the multiplication stopped and the conversion of alcohol ramped up (no yeast energy wasted on reproduction).

Long story short, food is starting to run out for the yeast. The sugars that are left in the mixture are getting fewer and farther between, and more difficult to metabolize. A lot of yeast are going to start dying in a few days and if they die in the solution they’re going to impart a skunky smell and flavor to the beer. Moving the beer into a secondary fermenter reduces the amount of yeast in the solution dramatically, leaving only enough yeast to consume the remaining suspended sugars.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Things are on track - fingers crossed that it all continues going in the right direction.