no visible fermentation?

eatria · 04-25-2007, 04:17 AM

I'm brewing my 2nd batch of beer (while not having tasted the first one yet) and haven't seen much signs of fermentation.

here's the deal

Chilled wort in a bucket of cold water to 75*

Pitched yeast and swirled the carboy

Upon swirling, noted that the temperature dropped rapidly to about 62 degrees (evidently, the temp wasn't evenly distributed and i must have siphoned from the top-warm liq rises)

Let the carboy sit with a towel around it for 2 days.
after day one- nothing

after day two- slight foam accumulation at very top - temperature still down in high 60's.

used a small space heater to raise the temperature to 75* and swirled the carboy again, to shake up any settled yeast.

now i'm waiting.

did i do anything wrong? shoudl i have done anything differently?

Ó Flannagáin · 04-25-2007, 09:27 AM

Did you aerate before pitching the yeast? i.e. shake the sh## out of your wort? If not you might not get great attenuation but should still get some fermentation and probably won't start for a while, up to 3 days before fermentation shows signs of starting.

paranode · 04-25-2007, 04:53 PM

What kind of yeast and what kind of beer? Original gravity reading?

eatria · 04-25-2007, 11:08 PM

it's going now.

it's a honey ale, white labs german ale/kolsh yeast

orig grav = 1.053

z987k · 04-26-2007, 02:54 AM

I have used munton's dry ale yeast on the last couple of generic type of beer's I have made and if you ever have problems with fermentation, I would suggest this stuff. It's fermented out completely in 2-3 days every time with bubbles within the hour after pitching. Some strong little suckers.

Jeffrey1122 · 11-24-2010, 05:07 PM

Don't worry about it. My first batch showed NO visible signs of fermentation in the airlock. The bucket was not airtight. It fermented fine. As long as you see some krausen on top, it should be fine.