Air lock not moving at all after 30 hours

It has been 30 hours since I pitched the yeast on a belgian wheat beer. The yeast was from white labs. There has not been any sign of fermentation from the air lock (I know a common question) so I took a look inside to find that it had a nice rocky head on the beer. So im assuming it's fermenting, but why is the air lock not bubbling? I checked the temperature on some wine I have next to it and it was 67 degrees. Could it just be fermenting that slow? Thanks. This board has been extremely helpful.

buckets leak

The yeast is alive. Your airlock died.

Or ok, yeah, a bucket leak.

I pushed down on the lid softly before I opened the bucket and the air lock reacted like it should. Is that not a reliable way of checking for a bucket leak?

brewtexas said:

I pushed down on the lid softly before I opened the bucket and the air lock reacted like it should. Is that not a reliable way of checking for a bucket leak?

Click to expand...

Mmmmm, not really. pressing down on the lid puts all the pressure on the lid and not where the leak is.

I *think* the only way to check for a leak is to remove the airlock and seal the opening and then press down on the lid. (If there isn't a leak you shouldn't be able to.)

Or you could do a brew with the opening sealed-- when your fermenter explodes you look at the rupture; if it originated from one specific location then you had a leak-- if it got turned to ribbons then you didn't.

You could try stirring it up a little. I sometimes have problems with my lock not going so whenever that happens I take a stirrer that attaches to power drill and stir it up nice and good then replace the lock. Are you using a plastic or glass fermenter?

If you've secured your lid all the way around the bucket, the probable culprit might be the gasket holding the airlock. Two days into primary fermentation this weekend, I discovered that mine had split and CO2 was escaping around instead of through my airlock. Fortunately had a spare sitting around to replace it.

Thanks for the input guys

Aside from the leak potential, if you're doing a small batch (say 3 gallon batch in a 6 gallon bucket), it could take awhile to get enough pressure to show up on the airlock. You didn't state the batch size so I didn't assume.

What was your OG? What does your hydrometer say now?