Krausen for a Brewsin

I removed the Krausen Kollar yesterday. As you can see from the picture there is a fair bit of 'gunk' left around the rim. I'm not sure exactly what this is but at a guess I'd say it's either dead/inactive yeast or a byproduct of the fermentation process. Either way, it's now a part of our sewerage system in Burntisland so if you live near the Haugh Road, sorry about the smell.

You can see that the bubbles have subsided considerably. At their peak I had bubbles about 4cm(1½") above the surface of the beer but now we're down to just a few on the surface. The lid is back on now and it remains this way for at least 3 days, possibly more. At that point testing the Specific Gravity (SG) daily becomes necessary to check for Final Gravity (FG). This is simply the point when the SG becomes stable for 2 or more days, and it indicates that the fermentation process is finished.

I checked the SG today (Day 4) and it was down to 1.012. This is a little lower than I expected and either means the fermentation process has run its course early, or that Hermano Cerveca will be a little stronger than I first feared. Thinking about it now, my earlier fears about my lower Original Gravity (OG) might simply have been down to the quality of water we enjoy in Scotland.

The reason for the concern is that alcohol content is calculated  using the following formula:

OG - FG ÷ 7.46 + 0.5% (to allow for bottle fermentation)

You don't need to stress the maths, the simple rule is that the larger the gap between OG and FG means the greater the alcohol volume. To give some perspective, if my FG is at 1.000 then my ABV will be about 5%. If FG ends at 1.007 then we're looking at 4%. It might seem a little weird that I am stressing so much about the ABV. The truth is, I just want my label to look right!

Finally, I've tasted the 'beer'. It's, well... not great. But it's not finished! As my wife Jenny put it "it tastes like warm, flat, crap beer". Sounds Mexican to me...