I have about 4 brews under my belt, brewing mainly extract using Brewers Best Kits for now. I brewed one up on Friday morning, their Summer Ale Kit. The yeast included in that kit is Safeale US-05. I did all of the necessary sanitation, hop schedule, etc. I cooled down the wort after boiling using my first DIY homebrew project (an immersion chiller). It brought down the temp to about 75 degrees and then added my tap off water which brought it down to about 68 degrees. I then aerated and pitched at around that temperature. I know that fermentation can sometimes take awhile to show visable signs so i relaxed, didn't worry and had a homebrew when i didn't see any airlock activity Saturday or Sunday. However, when i didn't see any activity when i came home from work today i got a little bit worried so I investigated. I am using a swamp cooler (more on this later) and t-shirt method, and when i lifted up the t-shirt i saw about an inch and a half crack in the fermenter lid about where the airlock grommet goes.
My question now becomes this, is there anyway to fix this? I just sprayed some star san on the crack to sanitize it and put a piece of blue tape over it. Any other suggestions on fixing this? I don't have another vessel to transfer this to (no empty buckets or carboys).
Second Question: As far as monitoring fermentation temperature I have attempted to utilize the swamp cooler method with a small fan blowing on a wet t-shirt. See picture for my setup. I am using a digital thermometer that has the probe (for monitoring meat temperature, etc). Should i have the probe in the water or should i tape this to the fermenter bucket. Theoretically the temperature of the liquid on the outside should be about the same as the temperature of the wort correct? I am only looking for ballpark figures here, not exact. Any suggestions would be awesome.
My question now becomes this, is there anyway to fix this? I just sprayed some star san on the crack to sanitize it and put a piece of blue tape over it. Any other suggestions on fixing this? I don't have another vessel to transfer this to (no empty buckets or carboys).
Second Question: As far as monitoring fermentation temperature I have attempted to utilize the swamp cooler method with a small fan blowing on a wet t-shirt. See picture for my setup. I am using a digital thermometer that has the probe (for monitoring meat temperature, etc). Should i have the probe in the water or should i tape this to the fermenter bucket. Theoretically the temperature of the liquid on the outside should be about the same as the temperature of the wort correct? I am only looking for ballpark figures here, not exact. Any suggestions would be awesome.