Check it out

Mr. Beer encourages periodic checking of the wort to examine the progress, which I believe is important for beginners like me.   However, even though you should check the progress of your wort, patience is your ally during this process.  

There are a couple of ways you can check the progress of your wort, but there is one way you should absolutely avoid: opening the cap on the keg.  This could introduce bacteria, mold, and/or wild yeasts into your batch and spoil the taste.

The best way to check on your batch is to shine a flashlight through side of the keg to see foam at the top and bubbles rising through the wort.  You'll also be able to gauge the clarity of the batch.  This method helps you eyeball the layer of dead yeast, or trub, at the bottom of the keg.  This layer of sediment should increase over time. 

The second way to check on the progress of fermentation is to sample a little bit.  For a beginner, I think this is very important.  This allows the brewer to visually check the color and clarity of the beer, smell the aroma, and taste the batch.

To clarify, even though my first post was on April 3, I put the wort into the keg on the evening of March 26.  As I mentioned, Mr. Beer's recommendation was a minimum of 7 days for the fermentation stage. The seventh day of fermentation was April 2.

I had been shining a flashlight into the keg every day to check for bubbles and foam.  I never saw bubbles, but there was a very thin layer of foam that clung to the side for the keg first few days.  Beyond that, there were some half-dollar sized foam clumps that formed on the top of the wort.  After reading some forum posts, I was able to rest assured that this is normal for the style of beer I am brewing.

Even though I planned to leave the batch fermenting for up to 2 weeks, I wanted to see what the beer would look like using the minimum recommendation.   I sampled the batch on the evening of the seventh day to see how far along the fermentation process had come.  Since the tap runs very slowly (intentionally), I simply put a spoon underneath the spigot and drained a tiny bit out of the keg. 


The beer was still cloudy, and had a strong, bready aroma.  There was still a slight bit of sweetness in the taste.  All of these indicators told me the batch was not ready.  So, had I used the minimum recommendation, my beer would not have come out as tasty as it could have. However, this encouraged me to continue to sample the batch every day to find out how much the batch would change over time.

I checked the beer again on the evening of the eight day, and boy, what a difference.  My first step is always to shine the flashlight through the side of the keg.   I immediately noticed the clarity of the beer had improved.  Also, there were no floating clumps or foam on the sides of the keg

I put a spoon under the tap and took a sample.  The beer was a clear, golden color.  The aroma was still yeasty, but now it smelled more like beer and not bread.  There was almost no sweetness in the taste, and the overall characteristics were more like flat beer.

I was encouraged by the progress the batch had made, and I am sticking with my original plan of leaving it in the keg for up to 2 weeks before bottling.