JJ Husker
Assistant Coach
Some yeasts and batches of beer will ferment hard and heavy early while others seem to barely bubble but for longer. Top fermenting ale yeasts typically are wilder-quick and heavy and done within a few days. Sounds to me like you got good fermentation but may need to let it bottle condition longer. I've done a bunch of different ales and all of them got better the longer they bottle conditioned. Sure, supposedley you can drink them in about 2 weeks but most beers I've brewed were much better sitting for 2 to even 4 months before drinking or refrigerating. Another trick you can try, if holding room temperature in the desired range is difficult, is to wrap a blanket around your fermentation vessel. It will help hold the heat generated by the fermentation and, in the case of clear or glass carboys, it will protect your brew from light degredation. Light is a natural enemy to good beer that is why you should always use brown bottles and never clear. But, don't make the mistake I did on my first hefeweizen. Our room temp was a few degrees below optimum and bubbling was extremely light the first couple days so I put a heating pad on top of my fermenter hoping it would raise the temp enough for it to take off. Boy did it. It blew the bubbler off the fermenter while I was at work and beer was actually dripping from the ceiling in my kitchen. The wife? She not so happy. I had to rig up an additional tube into a bucket of water in addition to the bubbler to relieve enough pressure fast enough.
