Stopped bubbling after 24 hours, was it the pumpkin?

Hi, I'm making my first brew, using Brooklyn Brew Shop's Chestnut Brown Ale gallon kit. After 24 hours of bubbling in the fermentation bottle, I now see almost no activity at all.

I "modified" the brew by adding 15oz of canned pumpkin before boiling. Also, my basement is a bit cool, 65 deg.

Should I add more yeast or did I screw things up?

Thanks for any comments!
Ralph

What's the gravity? That's the only way to really tell what the yeast are doing / have done. 65F is a perfect temp, though the beer itself will be a few degrees higher inside than the room temperature.

It doesn't mean anything that the airlock stopped bubbling, except there's no need for it to bubble. It's a vent, to release excess co2, it's not a magic fermentation gauge. Whether it stopped or starts again means nothing.

You don't have to re-yeast, you just have to stop hovering around your fermenter, and let the yeast do what they need to do. Read this and walk away from your fermenter for a week or 3.

Revvy replies:

END OF THREAD

;-)

15 oz of pumpkin in a 1 gallon kit seems like a lot of pumpkin.

Follow Revvy's advise, fermentation performs quite nicely without human intervention.

Revvy said:

It doesn't mean anything that the airlock stopped bubbling, except there's no need for it to bubble. It's a vent, to release excess co2, it's not a magic fermentation gauge. Whether it stopped or starts again means nothing.

You don't have to re-yeast, you just have to stop hovering around your fermenter, and let the yeast do what they need to do. Read this and walk away from your fermenter for a week or 3.

Click to expand...

apratsunrthd said:

Revvy replies:

END OF THREAD

;-)

Click to expand...

Revy needs to have a dedicated button on the keyboard that replies to these questions...

I bet Revvy has a script written that searches for "bubble" every 5 seconds and alerts him if there is a match so that he can respond.

I know this thread is (except for the pumpkin) covered in numerous earlier posts, but there's *beer* at stake!

So it came out fine of course. Though I didn't crack the secret of a really good pumpkin ale, it is not bad.

I just started my second effort, again using the Brooklyn Brew Shop 1-gallon grain kit -- this time a Chocolate Maple Porter.

This time there's still plenty of bubble activity at 5 days after starting fermentation. I'm guessing the difference is that the temperature of my basement is lower (62-64 F versus 68-70 F for the previous effort) so the yeast are taking their time. Also this recipe called for adding 3/4 cup of maple syrup to wort, which is a lot of additional fermentable sugar.

The following is a humorous response and is not to be taken seriously
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But... on the DIY forums there's a really cool project for building a computer controlled bubble counter. It logs the time of day, how many bubbles were released, and estimates total co2 released...

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This is the end of the humorous response not to be taken seriously
(Revvy)

rgonzale said:

So it came out fine of course. Though I didn't crack the secret of a really good pumpkin ale, it is not bad.

Click to expand...

if you're looking for a great pumpkin ale recipe, check in the recipe section for Onipar's Moon Hill. really simple recipe that makes a GREAT beer. i'm not a fan of most pumpkin beers (although i do like Brooklyn Brewery's pumpkin ale a lot), but the Moon Hill came out really nice, and is definitely something i'll brew again.