Cloning a Golden Dragon Part 7 - Monitoring Fermentation

In the earlier parts of this series of posts, I talked about how I captured a yeast sample from four bottles of Gulden Draak ale, grew that tiny sample into a quantity large enough to brew with, selected a recipe and created a wort, pitched the Gulden Draak yeast into that wort, and began fermenting it into a beer.

Tonight, I'm providing an update on the progress of fermentation.  The vertical axis of the chart at the left shows the standard gravity of the beer from the start of fermentation (original gravity) to today (day 12 in the left-right axis).

The yeast has done very well, having consumed about 55% of the sugars in the wort at the end of its boil.  Most of this work was done in the first seven days, which is not unusual, but fermentation continues... which is good.

The red (and flat) line in the chart represents the Final Gravity I hope to achieve with the beer.  Assuming the yeast continues consuming sugar at approximately the pace they have over the last few days, they should reach the goal in about two weeks.  At that point, I'll bottle the beer.  I should get approximately a 24-bottle case of 12-ounce beers out of the batch I brewed.  Those bottles will need to spend at least two weeks carbonating, and 2 months or more conditioning in the bottle.

Brewing a high-gravity (high-alcohol-content) beer like this is an exercise in patience.