One piece air lock

I'm not seeing any bubbles, but each side of the S with water in them have gone up or down so it seems like pressure has changed at least. Is that normal?

If your fermenting in a bucket, you may not have a good seal. This is really no big deal. How long has the beer been in the fermenter?

Without fermentation and a good seal your airlock could do almost anything. A drastic weather change could make it bubble on the fermenter side with air being sucked in. If you have vodka or sanitizing solution in it this would not be a concern.

It's been maybe four days at this point. Didn't use sanitized water (though it had just been boiled quite a bit immediately before so should have been sanitary prior to going in the sanitized lock). Definitely had pressure changes in the atmosphere as we are experiencing a blizzard so that could account for the water moving up and down. I will hope for the best. If not, I already have my next brew lined up.

Is this in a bucket or carboy? How long since you pitched the yeast? Has the airlock ever bubbled?

Bucket. I haven't seen it since we finished the boil, chilled, and pitched. I guess that was Saturday so almost a week. It's at a buddy's house (my roommates aren't fond of the smell post-boil so tend to do it over there) and he's yet to see bubbles. Just the water levels going up and down. Temperature is right. We had always used a three piece before and always saw bubbles. This is our first time with a one piece.

Would it hurt to crack it open and check for krausen?

I'd go ahead and crack the lid and take a look. Sometimes those buckets may not seal quite right allowing the CO2 to escape without affecting the airlock much. If it's fermenting this won't be a problem at all since the CO2 will be pushing anything bad out with it.

To quote my friend "it smells like beer not wort"

looks like it's done with most of the primary fermentation. That ring around the bucket is a solid sign of krausen. Stuff on top is just yeast rafts/some trub. I'll seal it back up, pour some vodka or the like in the airlock and leave it alone for 2-3 weeks. Check gravity around then, if it's stable over 3 days bottle it up.

How many gallon batch was this? Extract? Recipe?

5 gallons. Midwest Supplies' Irish red. (So extract). Says to ferment in the bucket for two weeks if doing single fermentation.

mauer01 said:

5 gallons. Midwest Supplies' Irish red. (So extract). Says to ferment in the bucket for two weeks if doing single fermentation.

Click to expand...

Those instructions are better than what they used to send with the kit. If you do good temperature control the Irish red will probably be ready to bottle in 2 weeks but it might be ready to drink a little sooner if you give it 3 weeks in the fermenter. The beer will need time to mature, for the flavors to "come together" if you will and this process works faster on the yeast cake than it does in the bottle. Adding a week in the fermenter seemed to take nearly 2 weeks off the maturation period for me.

I leave almost all mine for 3 weeks. Like said above I think it really helps the beer mature faster

mauer01 said:

To quote my friend "it smells like beer not wort"

View attachment 103014

Click to expand...

Funny, that is the thing I noticed, is that my IPA a week after pitching smells like IPA, not wort. I noticed this when I opened the door to check on my wort, the smell wafted over me. Apparently I now have beer!

Technically when you pitch yeast it is no longer wort but is now beer even though the yeast haven't even started to work but for sure, when it smells like beer, you have beer.

Vodka will not sterilize: Ster. alcohol, isopropanol or ethanol, work only if 70% with remainder as water. Worse, the dissolved alcohol evaporates over time. Got my arse chewed out on the job about this.
You can do several things all at once: water in airlock, attached to a wetted cotton-filled filter tube, attached to a length of tubing. Pasteur showed, 160 years ago, that live stuff could not get up the tube to infect a nutrient solution. All cheap, dependable safeguards.