To Keg or to wait

[DSB]

My fermentation lock is still bubbling - once every 3 minutes or so. The gravity comes out at about 2015/2014 for the last couple of days - I think it seems fairly solid. Should I keg or wait? The trouble is, I'm off on holiday on Sunday for a week and would have liked to have kegged before I went. Don't like to leave the heat belt on while I'm away and if I take the heat belt off it will surely stop anyway. It's been in the FV for 9 days now. It still needs to do the secondary FV in the keg anyway. My gut reaction is to keg. It's got an S30 combi/valve at the top in any case. Will this be enough to release the pressure if it builds up too much? It would be rather nice to keg it anyway. Still got some Fixby Gold in the other keg to go at, but I'm afraid it might run out before the other is ready. Your advice would be welcome - desperately hoping for the right answer. posting.php?mode=edit&f=4&p=250546#

[Barm]

Have you got another vessel (must be airlocked) that you could use as a secondary fermenter? The ideal plan would be to "drop" (ie syphon) the brew into this, leaving the primary yeast-bed (the "lees") behind. The beer would then be safe under airlock for many weeks before kegging.

But if you have to, then kegging will at least be "safe" (ie explosion-free) due the pressure relief rubber on the valve; different story if you'd been looking at bottling it though....
In your situation, I think my call would be to keg; after 9 days (assuming temperature has been ok), it must be virtually finished, any remaining activity will be very low-level and slow so there's little risk of eruptions etc.
Probably the worst that'll happen is that you may get a bit more of a yeast deposit in the keg than normal, since clearly the fermentation isn't quite completely over; and the brew may end up more highly carbonated than usual due to extra CO2.
Miles better than risking a spoiled brew due to picking up dodgy dead-yeastie flavours....

[DSB]

In your situation, I think my call would be to keg

This is the answer I was hoping for. The temperature has been fine throughout. Unless I get any other 'objections' it will be kegged at about 10.30pm this evening.

Best wishes

[ColinKeb]

you could leave it without the heat belt on while youre on holiday and it would be fine imho or you can keg it, with the relief valve it should be okay although I wouldnt add any priming sugar obvioulsy