[swimsalone]

Hello, I'm new to the board and have a concern about an American Pale Ale I've got fermenting right now.

I brewed it roughly 10 days ago and everything went well. The recipe said to dry hop after 7 days or when fermentation slowed. I dry hopped it last night because the fermentation activity had, in fact, slowed way down from a visual standpoint. After I added the hop pellets I got the normal increase in airlock activity for a few hours, but since then the airlock hasn't budged at all. I have beer anxiety. Please reassure me that this is normal for a beer with an OG of 1.053 ten days out from pitching my yeast when everything else went normally.

[dannyjed]

don't worry, be happy... airlock activity doesn't tell you as much as taking a gravity reading.  You should be fine bottling or kegging in another week.

[garc_mall]

Relax, your beer is doing fine, 10 days is actually a bit late for fermentation to be done. I would take a gravity reading now, so you can compare it to the gravity at the end of dry hopping. If they are the same, you can go straight into the bottle.

[swimsalone]

Thanks for the reassurance. I'll be kegging next weekend if the final gravity is on target. I should have taken a gravity reading when I dry hopped....

[garc_mall]

If you are kegging, its not that big of a deal. Kegs can take a lot of pressure.

[alcaponejunior]

I prescribe a couple of beers for anxiety relief and patience enhancement.

[Jimmy K]

I imagine the dry hops would cause some dissolved CO2 to come out of solution, resulting in beer that's no longer saturated with CO2. This means CO2 from small amounts of fermentation would just dissolve into the beer for a while (instead of coming out into the headspace) until saturation is reached again. Ergo - no bubbling.