Eamster

Recipes 

Since I am new to brewing I have a quick question. I am brewing the Irish Red from Midwest and it only has shown signs of fermentation in airlock for 1.5 days. Is this common?

CarboyBoy

Recipes 

Welcome to the hobby! My first was their Autumn Amber, and it was delicious.

Airlock activity is an unreliable indication of the start and end of fermentation. Many people around here including me will tell you not to worry about it, and take a gravity reading after a couple weeks. If you have two identical readings within three days, fermentation is complete, and you can move on to the next step in your process.

mcbrown

Recipes 

I'll be brewing up the same Red Ale from Midwest very soon...I hope in the next week. I'll keep an eye on this post for sure, as well as maybe we can share our results. This will be my first batch ever as well.

Cheers!

Eamster

Recipes 

Here some pics of the current brew. The FG ended up being 1.016. I was hoping for lower but I will take what I can get. My wort temp may have been a bit to high at pitching. Let me know what you think. Since I am new to this let me know if this looks normal : ) hopefully so.

robertus

Recipes 

I'm still relatively green, but that looks like a perfectly cromulent beer.

revansCAAD8

Recipes 

I'm sure your is fine... I too have Midwest's Irish Red in the fermentor right now! However, I created a starter using WYeast 1084 (Irish Ale yeast) and got bubbles within 3hrs and lasted a good 3 days.

PS what was you OG reading? Mine was 1.052 but I also crushed my grains (if that makes any difference) and did a full 5.5gal boil.

Let us know how it turns out!

Robert

Eamster

Recipes 

Not sure what the OG was. The wort was very foamy at the top after I topped it off so I couldn't get a good reading. I need to get a thief so I can get more accurate readings.

JimmytheGeek

Recipes 

Very common! In fact, the Miller Lite "clone" I just brewed showed absolutely NO activity in the airlock. My OG was 1.040 and it finished at 1.000, giving me a 5.3% ABV. How did it finish out? Amalase Enzyme. I'm on a low-carb diet, and will only have 4.2 g in each bottle.

I've also had other batches do little to no activity and since I got out of the Mr. Beer kits some 5 years ago, I've never brewed a batch below 4.8%. So as you can see, airlocks are quite unreliable as indicators of the final product, and is especially dependent on what you use in your airlock. The thinner stuff like water & vodka will tend to show more activity than something like glycerin, which is what I use most of the time.

"Relax. Don't worry, have a homebrew!" -- Charlie Papazian

janson745

Recipes 

Glad to see some other beginners out here. Yesterday was my first ever Brew Day and I, too, was using the Midwest Irish Red. A full 5.5 gallon boil, using a turkey fryer. Man was it a nice day to start this amazing hobby/addiction. My OG reading was 1.042 and the only hiccup I found was the cooling process... I used an ice bath, but (obviously) the hot pot melted the ice in the water very quickly and I had only bought 20 lbs of ice to go into the bath, thinking this was enough. I was wrong. So total cool down time was bout 30 minutes.

I finished about 2:30 yesterday afternoon and this morning as I checked on my new baby, there was some substantial bubbling going on in the airlock. And I know that this is not the only way to see or know whats going on, but it makes me happy to see that I might have actually done it right

I gotta hand it to you guys on here, without reading the posts for the last 2 weeks, I would not have been so comfortable in my first Brew Day. Gotta say I will be back! Already planning #2.

TBaGZ

Recipes 

Looks familiar..



My fermentation was very quick and non eventful as well.

__________________
I want to make beer!