Angry Yeast

To start off, let me say that I am happy to have found this place. Lots of good info here. One such fact that I learned here is the "blow-off"..
In other words i did try to do some research before posting to see if my question had already been answered.
I found similar postings, but none quite exact...

anyway, saturday night i started my third batch, this time a box with the ingredients already measured out, etc. (its called Gen. Palmers IPA or something like that) i sanitized and heated and steeped and stirred and stirred then stirred some more and boiled and cooled... and waited...
apparently, from what ive read here, not long enough..
i put the yeast into a cleaned and sanitized gallon OJ jug with some water that was just lukewarm, and set it to the side for a few minutes while i waited for the liquid in my primary to cool a bit.
ok.. this is getting kinda windy...
uhm.. so anyway, 77 deg, i knew it was a little soon, but it was getting late, so i tossed my yeasty water into the 5 gal plastic primary, put the lid on and plugged the hole with an S lock..
my god! immediately the thing was singing... it was percolating like coffee.
so, i said :rockin:, and went to bed....
next morning (sunday) i got up and went to see how it was doing, and heard a whistling sound as i opened the bathroom door... and saw my fermenter bowed out like a weeble-wobble, and all that green junk in the S-lock, which also was now out of water too...
haha i pulled the plug to let the pressure out and to clean the ....ing thing
and you know what happened next... looked like a leprechaun exploded in my bathroom! hahaha
put the lock back in, and it commenced to continue bubbling again right away, not quite as furiously as it had been before, but still like it meant business. i left it go, and when i got home about 10 sunday night, and it wasnt bubbling anymore...
24 hrs?
i opened it up monday evening and took a reading. OG had been right on at 1.04, and now reading was, again, right on at 1.01
48 hrs?
as i watched it this morning during some.. uh.. morning activities, i noticed it bloop once, and a couple minutes later it blooped again. very weak.

SO... hahaha.. tonight (72hrs) if its still not doing anything (which im sure it wont be) would there be any reason why i couldn't (or shouldn't) siphon it to my secondary (6gal glass carboy) and add the dry hops, and let it hang out in there for a while?

(btw, i cracked a window, and when i looked at it sunday morning it was sitting right on 68deg, where it has been since)

I've had beers ferment out fast like that, so it's not totally abnormal! But I'm concerned about the high fermentation temperature. Sure, it's 68 in the room right now, but you pitched at 77 degrees, and fermentation produces even more heat, so you probably got well over 80 degrees inside that fermenter. That can produce some fruity flavors, and some "hot" fusel alcohols.

It probably would be best to let the beer sit a couple more days in a stable environment, and then rack to secondary. Even after the majority of fermentation is finished, the yeast are still working. After the fermentable sugars are gone, the yeast go back and even digest their own waste products like diacetyl.

Do you have a way to monitor fermentation temperature of the beer inside the fermenter? I have a couple of "stick on" thermometers like those on aquariums so I can see the actual fermentation temperature. Usually, during an active fermentation, it's several degrees higher than room temperature and during the summer, it can be 10 degrees warmer than the ambient air temperature.

I would let it sit a few more days let the yeastys clean up a bit and then rack to secondary and dry hop

YooperBrew said:

Do you have a way to monitor fermentation temperature of the beer inside the fermenter? I have a couple of "stick on" thermometers like those on aquariums so I can see the actual fermentation temperature.

Click to expand...

thanks for the reply.
yes, i do have the kind of stick on 'fermometor' that you mentioned.
the temps i described were from that thermometer.
ive also now gotten a digital thermometer that ive stuck to the mirror so i can see the ambient temp in the room also. that particular bathroom seems to like to keep the liquid steady at 68 with nothing but a light towel wrapped around the bucket. (havent brewed during summer yet...)