Stirred my Wort on Third Day

I'm generally freaking out now. I'm a complete beginner and started my first brew from a Brewer's Best kit. The prep and pitch went smoothly and airlock activity started the next morning. Then, after two days, the activity in the airlock stopped.

Being a complete newbie, I opened up my primary and stirred the wort vigorously to try and "restart" fermentation. Later, I read this could completely ruin my beer. It seems to have renewed the airlock activity, though, and I am planning on taking my first gravity reading (post OG) a little later.

How, and when, will I know if I ruined this batch? Is there any way to tell before bottling? Will the SG keep moving even if the beer has been "oxidized"?

Any help would be awesome. I'm really bummed that I messed up so badly.

By opening up and stirring you exposed the beer to oxygen so you may end up with a sub-par result.
Many normal beers have airlock activity subside to a casual burp after 2-3 days of vigorous activity.

CKing said:

By opening up and stirring you exposed the beer to oxygen so you may end up with a sub-par result.
Many normal beers have airlock activity subside to a casual burp after 2-3 days of vigorous activity.

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Once the airlock stops after the first few days... what exactly is happening?

You should be ok... Oxidation won't affect the fermentation process. However, it can produce some off flavors. RDWHAHB.

mandobud16 said:

You should be ok... Oxidation won't affect the fermentation process. However, it can produce some off flavors. RDWHAHB.

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Oh, good. I'm planning on giving away a few sixers for Christmas haha. My family is going to love me :cross:

GravyTrain77 said:

Once the airlock stops after the first few days... what exactly is happening?

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While the yeast have plenty of malt sugars they eat them and excrete alcohol, CO2 and a host of other byproducts. Once the malt sugars are gone there is no more CO2 produced but the yeast continue to break down the byproducts into more alcohol. This also clears up some off flavors. Don't be in a rush to do anything with your beer. Give the yeast all the time they need to create a good beer.

RM-MN said:

While the yeast have plenty of malt sugars they eat them and excrete alcohol, CO2 and a host of other byproducts. Once the malt sugars are gone there is no more CO2 produced but the yeast continue to break down the byproducts into more alcohol. This also clears up some off flavors. Don't be in a rush to do anything with your beer. Give the yeast all the time they need to create a good beer.

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I don't have anything for secondary yet so it's just sitting in the same bucket for approaching 2 weeks. (irish red from midwest) Is it possible to let it ferment for too long? Instructions say 2 weeks then bottle.
I know following the directions word for word can lead to not having much fun... but this is just my first batch. Still learning tons

Anytime you introduce anything to the wort below a certain temperature you have the possibility of infection. Once mine is in the fermenter I leave it totally alone except to check and make sure the airlock still have liquid in it. Don't worry though, because we all panic at some time during our first brew or two. It is usually in this panic stage that we do something we wish we hadn't. Beer is pretty resilient stuff. It may not taste as good as it could, but a slightly off beer you made yourself, still beats a lot of what others call beer.

No worries about leaving the beer in primary for longer than 2 weeks - this is probably the minimum time for the recipe. If you want to use SCIENCE, check the gravity daily, and bottle when it stops changing. This will tell you that the yeast has fermented as much as it can.

GravyTrain77 said:

I don't have anything for secondary yet so it's just sitting in the same bucket for approaching 2 weeks. (irish red from midwest) Is it possible to let it ferment for too long? Instructions say 2 weeks then bottle.
I know following the directions word for word can lead to not having much fun... but this is just my first batch. Still learning tons

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Sounds like you got the same starter kit I did. Did you score the Living Social Deal as well? I also went with the Irish Red. Once that kit came in I ordered a Amber Ale which I ordered using the $25 discount that came with the Living Social Deal and the Veteran's Discount they were running last week along with a bunch of other stuff. Because I went with Wyeast (which won't keep as long as dry yeast) for my Amber I brewed that one first on Sunday. While I plan on going to a secondary (carboy) with mine I am going to do at least a week in primary and 2-3 weeks in secondary. Once I am done I will be kegging rather than going with bottles. If the readings seem to stop I will keg before heading out of town or it will wait until I get back.

If you have the same kit I have, you should have gotten the Hydrometer which is what you will use to determine if your fermentation is done. Then you can look at bottling.

GravyTrain77 said:

I don't have anything for secondary yet so it's just sitting in the same bucket for approaching 2 weeks. (irish red from midwest) Is it possible to let it ferment for too long? Instructions say 2 weeks then bottle.
I know following the directions word for word can lead to not having much fun... but this is just my first batch. Still learning tons

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I'm sure it is possible to let the beer ferment too long but I have read from another brewer that went 8 MONTHS and he said that that wasn't too long.

I only skimmed through the responses, so sorry if someone already asked, but you did sanitize whatever you stirred with?

Yea - stirring is not ideal, but you are probably fine. The yeast may be able to clean up the extra oxygen. As for the bucket question, plastic buckets are not oxygen barriers, so beer will oxidize over time if left to sit. 3-4 weeks is fine though, and you don't want to rush the beer!

The whole "two weeks then bottle" thing is to make brewing easier for beginners. You really want to wait until fermentation stops. As someone mentioned earlier, take a hydrometer reading every few days once you think the beer is done (sanitize everything first!). When the gravity stops going down, you are good to bottle.

sennister said:

Sounds like you got the same starter kit I did. Did you score the Living Social Deal as well? I also went with the Irish Red. Once that kit came in I ordered a Amber Ale which I ordered using the $25 discount that came with the Living Social Deal and the Veteran's Discount they were running last week along with a bunch of other stuff. Because I went with Wyeast (which won't keep as long as dry yeast) for my Amber I brewed that one first on Sunday. While I plan on going to a secondary (carboy) with mine I am going to do at least a week in primary and 2-3 weeks in secondary. Once I am done I will be kegging rather than going with bottles. If the readings seem to stop I will keg before heading out of town or it will wait until I get back.

If you have the same kit I have, you should have gotten the Hydrometer which is what you will use to determine if your fermentation is done. Then you can look at bottling.

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Yup same kit. I was looking to get a beer thief or turkey baster before I started taking readings. Don't want to risk dropping anything while holding hydrometer

You're probably OK--don't worry too much about it. People have been making beer in less than sanitary conditions using less than ideal techniques for all but the last couple hundred years or so, with mostly OK results.

Read through about 50 pages of posts on this thread, and if you're still worried, have a couple of homebrews (or, if this is your first batch, store-bought beer will do in a pinch). And if it does go south, take it as a learning experience, something you can laugh about down the road when you're enjoying a home-crafted cold one.

Cheers!

You don't/didn't need to do anything, except, pitch your yeast and walk away, and especially IGNORE WHAT YOUR AIRLOCK DOES OR DOESN'T DO.

Bubbling in primary SHOULD slow eventually...Bubbling stopping or slowing down doesn't mean fermentation has stopped it ONLY means bubbling has. An airlock is a VENT, a VALVE for EXCESS CO2. It's not a magic fermentation gauge. When the majority of sugars are eaten in the initial burst of fermentation, lots of co2 is released. As it slows down, bubbling ceases or stops altogether because there's not as much EXCESS Co2 being released.

But that doesn't mean fermentation is over, just that it's slowed down.

Fermentation is not always dynamic...just because you don't SEE anything happening doesn't mean that the yeast aren't happily chewing away at whatever fermentables are in there....the only way to know comes from gravity readings, and nothing else.

People who rack to a secondary too soon based on bubbling often get stuck fermentation, because they've taken the beer off the yeast while it was STILL FERMENTING.

It could just as easily be bubbling or stop bubbling for that matter, due to changes in barometric pressure, temperature, or whether or not the cat or vacuum cleaner bumped into it, as it could be to because it's still fermenting.

Activity, action, bubbles, even krausen can be affected by the envoironment just as much as it being caused by the yeast...so going by that is NOT reliable.

If you want to know what's going on with your beer, then take a gravity reading. The only way to truly know what is going on in your fermenter is with your hydrometer. Like I said here in my blog, which I encourage you to read, Think evaluation before action you sure as HELL wouldn't want a doctor to start cutting on you unless he used the proper diagnostic instuments like x-rays first, right? You wouldn't want him to just take a look in your eyes briefly and say "I'm cutting into your chest first thing in the morning." You would want them to use the right diagnostic tools before the slice and dice, right? You'd cry malpractice, I would hope, if they didn't say they were sending you for an MRI and other things before going in....

Going by airlocks is the same thing. There's still things going on under the surface despite what an airlock is or isn't doing.

New brewers always feel like they need to hover over their beers, and try to fix it or help it along, usually when the beer needs no help at all. Your beer was FINE.

In the future, pitch your yeast and;



They actually know more about how to make beer than YOU do. And rarely do they ever need our interference once yeast is added.

If you're just starting out, read anything and everything by this guy ^^^^^!!! He set me straight early on!

Once I have a beer in the fermenter, I don't even touch it for at least 3 weeks, maybe 4. I look at it every once in a while just because it's cool knowing that you made that. The bubbles don't mean anything!! If you're patient with your beer, it will be good to you!

I've had a beer in a glass carboy fermenter with absolutely zero airlock activity for days and could still see the yeast swirling throughout the carboy. The airlock means very little. I always leave in primary for at least a week (no matter what is happening in the airlock) and then move to secondary. It stays in secondary anywhere from a few days to a month depending on style and strength--not to mention how much empty space is in my beer fridge. I like the sign Revvy put on his last post. It's a great reminder--you only made the wort, let the yeast turn it into beer.

brewguyver said:

Yea - stirring is not ideal, but you are probably fine. The yeast may be able to clean up the extra oxygen. As for the bucket question, plastic buckets are not oxygen barriers, so beer will oxidize over time if left to sit. 3-4 weeks is fine though, and you don't want to rush the beer!

The whole "two weeks then bottle" thing is to make brewing easier for beginners. You really want to wait until fermentation stops. As someone mentioned earlier, take a hydrometer reading every few days once you think the beer is done (sanitize everything first!). When the gravity stops going down, you are good to bottle.

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True, ale pails etc are not 100% oxygen barrier, but good enough that you will not get oxidized beer. I have kept beer in the fermenter for months with no oxygen problems. Its actually safer to leave beer in the fermenter longer than the X weeks then transfer because that way you avoid bottle bombs and the beer can clean up and condition pre-bottling/kegging/filling your kiddie pool with.

Generally speaking with smaller beers, 3 weeks is usually rather safe to bottle if you don't use your hydrometer. Though bubbling is no indication of anything other than the pressure inside the bucket is higher than that outside, and definitely not a measure of if fermentation is done.

When you make your wort, after you pitch your yeast and aerate the wort, you should use a sanitized cup to get about 10oz of beer out of your fermenter. Transfer this beer into a bottle and use it to take your hydrometer readings without having to open up you fermenter. Put this bottle next to your fermenter. Take readings until you get a stable sg for two to three days. When the reading is stable your beer is done fermenting. Even if the wort in this bottle get contaminated the readings will still be accurate.

Atonk said:

I only skimmed through the responses, so sorry if someone already asked, but you did sanitize whatever you stirred with?

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Yes, I did sanitize before stirring.

And thank you kindly to all of you who've replied. I'm feeling a lot more confident now that I know I'll probably end up with beer (even if it is a little off). In the future, I will definitely stay hands-off during fermentation and let the yeast do its thing.

kgb294 said:

When you make your wort, after you pitch your yeast and aerate the wort, you should use a sanitized cup to get about 10oz of beer out of your fermenter. Transfer this beer into a bottle and use it to take your hydrometer readings without having to open up you fermenter. Put this bottle next to your fermenter. Take readings until you get a stable sg for two to three days. When the reading is stable your beer is done fermenting. Even if the wort in this bottle get contaminated the readings will still be accurate.

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No you shouldn't, you should man up and take REAL gravity readings, not relying on this.

It's called a "satellite fermenter" and it's been around, and shot down for years.

It a will only tell you WHAT YOUR BEER WILL FINISH AT, NOT when your 5 gallon batch of beer will be done.

It's used to measure attenuation of the yeast, not rate of fermentation.

It will take yeast a lot less time to chew through 12 ounces of wort than it will 5 gallons.....so don't trust that silly thing that someone came up with because they are too afraid to take samples from their beer as being accurate.

If you do take that as "gospel" you more than likely are rushing your beer off the yeast way to soon. You know "bottle Bombs" or suddenly posting an "is my beer in secondary ruined?" thread because now that you moved it to secondary because the "satellite" said it was done, you now have this scary looking growth that you have never seen in your bucket (because the lid is one) that suddenly grew on top of your wort and is ugly as sin....which we of course will tell you to rdwhahb because that is just krausen and it formed because you racked too soon and the yeast is still trying to work to make beer for you.

The idea came from commercial breweries, but you have to realize when they are using in it a 3 or 7 or 10bbl fermentaion setup, that their sattelite looks like this.



And they are drawing off hydro sample out of that bucket just like we do.

And they are STILL going to be taking readings and tasting the REAL beer in the ACTUAL FERMENTER, before making any determination.

It's been adopted by some home brewers, and unfortunately gets perpetuated by people (mostly noobs scared of taking real hydro readings) but it's about as accurate as airlock bubbling, (and you know where I count that in terms of fermentation gauges- slightly below the astrological calender )

Please don't fear taking a real hydro sample of your beer, don't ever go by a satellite grav reading.....Or an airlock....

Just take your grav reading and be done with it. And drink your samples.

In homebrewing there is so much that we advise folks not to do, yet the one thing that EVERY book, podcast, magazine and website talks about is gravity readings....

How do you think we get them?

Do you think the advice to take them is a vast conspiracy by us old timers to ruin millions of new brewer's batches, so that they flee the hobby and give it a bad rap? Or so they make crappy beer and we kick your asses in contests?

With simple sanitization practices openning the fermenter to take a reading is perfectly safe. You won't spoil your beer.

I know it's a scary premise, but it is really silly to avoid something scientific like a gravity reading because you're afraid of that and instead rely on something faulty like counting bubbles. You have to man up, grow some stones and get over the idea that openning your fermenter to do something positive like take a gravity reading, is dangerous.

Our beer is much stronger than that.

Revvy, I agree with everything you said, but this part gives me pause:

Revvy said:

People who rack to a secondary too soon based on bubbling often get stuck fermentation, because they've taken the beer off the yeast while it was STILL FERMENTING.

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If I leave a beer alone in primary for 4 weeks, then cold-crash for a week to drop everything out of solution, then hit it with a cup of dissolved gelatin, there's still more than enough yeast in solution to carbonate my bottles.

Yet you're saying that if I rack to secondary after just 1 week, that I lose enough yeast to halt fermentation of a still-rich wort?

How can that be? The yeast cells I'm racking off of are done working anyway; they've fallen to the bottom of the fermenter and gone to sleep. The ones still in solution are the ones still working, aren't they? And they'll get transferred on over to the secondary along with the wort. So how can premature racking result in a "stuck" fermentation?

kombat said:

Revvy, I agree with everything you said, but this part gives me pause:



If I leave a beer alone in primary for 4 weeks, then cold-crash for a week to drop everything out of solution, then hit it with a cup of dissolved gelatin, there's still more than enough yeast in solution to carbonate my bottles.

Yet you're saying that if I rack to secondary after just 1 week, that I lose enough yeast to halt fermentation of a still-rich wort?

How can that be? The yeast cells I'm racking off of are done working anyway; they've fallen to the bottom of the fermenter and gone to sleep. The ones still in solution are the ones still working, aren't they? And they'll get transferred on over to the secondary along with the wort. So how can premature racking result in a "stuck" fermentation?

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I have had it happen on a RIS we rushed and it stopped at 1028. We needed the primaries for another batch for a party and figured it would finish up in secondary...we were wrong and it is much sweeter than we planned.

It's true that there's still a bunch of yeast in suspension when you rack to secondary (or to bottles, if you don't secondary). But it's a small fraction of the active yeast that you're leaving behind in the primary. Plus, at that point there should be no oxygen left in the beer so the yeast are not able to reproduce aerobically in order to replenish their numbers as easily. With (comparatively) so few yeast left to consume so much sugar, it's not uncommon to end up with stuck fermentations and unhealthy, overstressed yeast, which can end up creating off-flavors in your beer. Yes, you would have enough yeast to consume the tiny amount of sugar used in bottle carbonation, but not enough to finish primary fermentation effectively. They may be able to do so over a long period of time, but by far the better practice is to leave the beer on the primary yeast cake until it's reached its terminal gravity, at which point you're not asking the relatively small number of yeast cells which transfer in suspension to carry too heavy a load.

jerrodm said:

It's true that there's still a bunch of yeast in suspension when you rack to secondary (or to bottles, if you don't secondary). But it's a small fraction of the active yeast that you're leaving behind in the primary. Plus, at that point there should be no oxygen left in the beer so the yeast are not able to reproduce aerobically in order to replenish their numbers as easily. With (comparatively) so few yeast left to consume so much sugar, it's not uncommon to end up with stuck fermentations and unhealthy, overstressed yeast, which can end up creating off-flavors in your beer. Yes, you would have enough yeast to consume the tiny amount of sugar used in bottle carbonation, but not enough to finish primary fermentation effectively. They may be able to do so over a long period of time, but by far the better practice is to leave the beer on the primary yeast cake until it's reached its terminal gravity, at which point you're not asking the relatively small number of yeast cells which transfer in suspension to carry too heavy a load.

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Yup, I liken it to asking the 2nd string JV team from the local highschool to play the 4th quarter of the superbowl for a team down by 3. They're just not strong enough to do the job of the big boys.

Revvy said:

Yup, I liken it to asking the 2nd string JV team from the local highschool to play the 4th quarter of the superbowl for a team down by 3. They're just not strong enough to do the job of the big boys.

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Or, one could say, asking the Jets to play the Patriots on Thanksgiving for a chance at a playoff berth...

I say that as a much-chagrined lifelong NYJ fan.

To answer your question, yes, the SG will keep moving even if the beer is oxidized. Also, the more you oxidize the beer, the more you will taste the oxidation. Will it make that much of a difference? Probably not. Most of the flavor you will see (good or bad) will come from everything else you have done, particularly fermentation temperature.

BTW, stirring is not the most aggressive oxidation method. If you would have picked up the bucket and shook it, or dropped in an oxygen stone, you may notice something more. My gut is you likely did nothing noticeable with it.