Still going in secondary

[brett327]

Hey all. I've never seen this particular behavior, so I thought I would throw it out into the peanut gallery to see what folks come up with. Have had my lastest batch of IPA (pretty standard recip/nothing extreme) in the secondary for ~15 days now with dry hops (whole). Seems like the fermentation was done (no more bubbles) after about 4 days, but now it seems to have picked up slightly and is giving me around 1 bubble every 40 seconds or so and visible bubble flow inside the secondary. It was at 1.015 going in to secondary. Anyone else had this happen? Should I let it go for a while more? Should I take a FG reading or just bottle it? What do you guys think?

Good times,

Brett

[toneyc]

You really cannot count on bubble activity to know when fermentation is done. You need to take a couple of hydrometer readings a day or two apart and look for any change. No change and it is ready to bottle.

:)
Toney.

[HogieWan]

Originally posted by toneyc
You really cannot count on bubble activity to know when fermentation is done.

exactly - by throwing the whole hops in, you've given some surface area to allow co2 to fall out of solution and fill the airspace, creating more pressure in the airspace and bubbling out more. So, bubbles don't mean fermentation is occurring