HELP!! Fermentation Has Slowed Very Quickly

First brew, 5g Milk Stout (extract) went into the fermenter around 9pm on Sunday night.  Came home around 5pm on Monday evening and the airlock was bubbling away!  Checked it again this morning, still kicking (38 bubbles per minute).  Just got home around 8:45pm tonight, roughly 48 hours in the fermenter, and I'm down to bubbling around 3 times every two minutes.  Room temp has maintained around 63-65 degrees.  Should I be concerned???

Being a newbie, looking for some guidance.  Done lots of reading. Some have concerns, some don't.  I planned on keeping in the fermenter for 3 weeks before bottling. Then in bottles for 2 weeks.  Thoughts on what I should do, if anything?

Thanks for everyone's help in advance!!

I'd raise the temperature to about 70F now and do a diacetyl rest.  After two days, drop it back down and follow your schedule.  If the gravity is steady over three consecutive days at the end of the three weeks, it's ready to bottle it.

So I have the room temp up to 70 degrees.  Still seeing about the same amount of bubbling (2 per minute on average).  How long should I hold at this temp??  Around 9pm tonight will be the end of day 3 of fermentation.  All help is appreciated.  Also, what could have been the cause??

"Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew" to quote Charlie Papazian. Although brewing follows the same general procedures yeast is organic and as such does not always behave the same. How a fermentation progresses depends on many many things such as recipie, water chemistry, yeast strain and yeast health, temperature and even the vessel. Your fermentations will not be the same every time. Don't worry. What you have going on is normal.

TAHammerton said:

"Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew" to quote Charlie Papazian. Although brewing follows the same general procedures yeast is organic and as such does not always behave the same. How a fermentation progresses depends on many many things such as recipie, water chemistry, yeast strain and yeast health, temperature and even the vessel. Your fermentations will not be the same every time. Don't worry. What you have going on is normal.

Click to expand...

Thanks!  Appreciate your feedback.  I'll be patient, and in the meantime, I'll get prepared for my next batch

So I have the room temp up to 70 degrees.

Click to expand...

Do you have a thermometer on the fermentation vessel? They sell sticky tabs like the ones you stick on a fish tank and call them fermometers. The reason I ask is that active yeast produces heat. To the point where commercial breweries often chill their primary tanks to keep the heat from ruining the brew. I've found that the fermenting wort is two to six degrees (F) warmer than room temperature.  The point being that room temperature is not fermentation temperature. One way I tell that a brew is getting done is that the temperature indicated by the fermometer on the primary vessel starts to drop to room temperature, or to the temperature of the secondary next to it. To get a more accurate picture of what's going on, you really need to know the temperature of the wort, not the room that it is in.