lukemarsh
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I made a Heineken style lager on the 10th of May and had it fermenting in my brew fridge at around 14 deg using frozen water bottles and a wet towel inside the turned off fridge. The OG was 1.045 and the airlock had been bubbling constantly for the past 10 or so days.
I did a hydrometer reading a few days ago and it was at about 1.020... I did another just now and it is at around 1.015 and the beer hasn't cleared up yet.
The airlock has completely stopped bubbling so I'm guessing it's stopped fermenting. I know you can't just go by the airlock, but it's gone from nonstop bubbling to dead silence with the water at the same level either side of the airlock (it's an S type airlock).
In the Brewing Crafts book (by Mike Rodgers-Wilson) it has the Heineken style lager recipe that I used (uses Brewcraft Dutch Lager kit + Brewcraft #60 German Lager kit converter + Saflager yeast and 22L final volume). In this recipe it says OG should be around 1.041 and the FG around 1.009.
Do I need to do anything to bring my FG down further? I'm just worried that I've gotten my OG reading wrong and therefore it still has more fermentation to go but has stalled (this tends to happen to my beers alot, they all stall at around 1.020 for some reason)...
Another thing is, I have 2 fermenters (one has a cider in it at the moment though)... should I consider secondary fermentation with this beer to make it clearer? I've never looked much into it so my knowledge of it is that basically you just drain the beer into another clean fermenter to get it off the yeast sediment at the bottom and allow the beer to clear... If I'm meant to do this, when is the best time? And what's the best way to do it?
Cheers!
I did a hydrometer reading a few days ago and it was at about 1.020... I did another just now and it is at around 1.015 and the beer hasn't cleared up yet.
The airlock has completely stopped bubbling so I'm guessing it's stopped fermenting. I know you can't just go by the airlock, but it's gone from nonstop bubbling to dead silence with the water at the same level either side of the airlock (it's an S type airlock).
In the Brewing Crafts book (by Mike Rodgers-Wilson) it has the Heineken style lager recipe that I used (uses Brewcraft Dutch Lager kit + Brewcraft #60 German Lager kit converter + Saflager yeast and 22L final volume). In this recipe it says OG should be around 1.041 and the FG around 1.009.
Do I need to do anything to bring my FG down further? I'm just worried that I've gotten my OG reading wrong and therefore it still has more fermentation to go but has stalled (this tends to happen to my beers alot, they all stall at around 1.020 for some reason)...
Another thing is, I have 2 fermenters (one has a cider in it at the moment though)... should I consider secondary fermentation with this beer to make it clearer? I've never looked much into it so my knowledge of it is that basically you just drain the beer into another clean fermenter to get it off the yeast sediment at the bottom and allow the beer to clear... If I'm meant to do this, when is the best time? And what's the best way to do it?
Cheers!