Bubbling stopped after ~30hrs

My first batch, "Muntons Connoisseurs Bock Beer Kit". mixed it up on Saturday evening around 7pm and used about .25 lbs of sugar and 3lbs DME, pitched the yeast at about 69/70*. forgot to check the gravity.

checked it Sunday morning and it was bubbling away quite readily, about 2 or 3 'glugs' per second. I then realized the area where I stored the pail was a bit warm (about 75-80*) so I moved it to a cooler place. checked it later sunday evening and it was still glugging away happily.

I check it today around 3pm and the airlock it completely dead. no activity to be seen whatsover.

did I break it?

Hi there - you might have a read around the forums before asking future questions since this question has been heavily answered, but air lock activity means nothing. Leave it alone for at least another week and then check to see if you've hit your finished gravity. In either case leave it alone for another week thereafter and provided you did hit your FG you are good to bottle...

Thank you! sorry, I didn't get a chance to read around. I was pretty worried about it. maybe it should be made a sticky thread?

I'm very relieved to see that I'm not in any trouble with my brew. I forgot to mention it in my first post but the beer kit says about 4-6 days to fully ferment (not sure if my outside addition of DME would affect that at all), but I'll be sure to check the gravity in about a week and then a few days after.

I look forward to making this site one of my frequently visited ones, and brewing much delicious beer.

dwbh

Active fermentation may be complete within 4-6 days, but it's ok to leave it in the primary fermentor for 3-4 weeks to allow time for the yeast to clean up their waste products left over from fermentation.

You can relax knowing that the yeast are in charge of your beer now and they are very good at what they do!

so should I be putting it into a secondary after the primary? or is that not needed with the kind of extract kit I used?

PolishStout said:

so should I be putting it into a secondary after the primary? or is that not needed with the kind of extract kit I used?

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Congrats! You managed to bring up the top two most discussed topics on HBT in the same thread.

Just giving you a hard time - not trying to be mean. Check around a bit. Lots of people don't use secondaries anymore unless they're adding fruit, oak, etc. or bulk aging.

PolishStout said:

so should I be putting it into a secondary after the primary? or is that not needed with the kind of extract kit I used?

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Some people do and some dont. It is not necessarily necessary but more of personal preference and if you are adding fruit or wood or what not to the beer. I believe there is a sticky on to secondary or not.

lol thanks!

I figured while I had this thread going, I may as well ask another dumb question

So much info out there for a newb to sort through. Before joining the forum, everything I read made it seem like I needed a secondary. Looks like I'll be using my new glass carboy as my second primary instead.

Use a hydrometer or refractometer to check the progress of your fermentation.

Smokeater233 said:

Hi there - you might have a read around the forums before asking future questions since this question has been heavily answered, but air lock activity means nothing. Leave it alone for at least another week and then check to see if you've hit your finished gravity. In either case leave it alone for another week thereafter and provided you did hit your FG you are good to bottle...

Click to expand...

I read this here so frequently I can't resist commenting. This is obviously a simplification and in fact not accurate. If you don't have a leak then airlock activity means the total pressure of gases inside your fermenter is greater than the pressure in your atmosphere plus the weight/friction exerted by the airlock itself. So when fermentation is active your airlock is cranking, as fermentation slows, airlock activity slows. True, it is a poor measure to tell you when you are at FG, but it is a pretty good measure of active fermentation. So just how much co2 are we producing with a typical 5 gallon batch?

The fromula for fermentation is

C6H12O6 (glucose) ------>2 C2H5OH (ethanol) + 2CO2

Since what we are mainly fermenting is maltose which is 2 glocose molecules, a gm of glucose and a gm of maltose will have the same number of glucose molecules. But we need to know the the amount of glucose in moles, not grams to calculate the volume of co2 gas.

1 mole of glucose = 180 gms. So lets say we have 6 lbs of maltose disolved in our wort and our yeast is efficient enough to convert 75% of it to EtOH and CO2. .75 x 6= 4.5 lbs glucose, there are around 453 gms per lbs so we have 4.5x453/180 gms per mole=11.3 mole glucose. From the fermentation formula you see we are going to get 2 moles of co2 for each mole of glucose so we are looking at around 22.5 moles of co2.

So how much is that? The interesting thing about gases is that they all pretty much occupy the same volume per mole at STP which is 1 atm and 0 degrees and that volume happens to be about 22 liters per mole. At room temp the volume is a little larger or about 24 liters per mole. So our 22.5 moles co2 x 24 liters per mole gives us a whopping volume of 540 liters!!!! of co2 at standard pressure and room temp. A small percentage of that will stay disolved in our fermenting beer, but most of it needs to get out.

Sorry for the long post but I get tired of reading this incorrect statement that airlock activity is meaningless, and I have even read folks try to claim that they have fermented entire batches with never getting any airlock bubbling. That may be true, but only because you have a leak that is providing a outlet with less resistance than the airlock, or you're magic and found a way around the laws of conservation of matter and energy.

So in fact the airlock really is a tool that directly and linearly measures the rate of fermentation, it just doesn't have the sensitivity to measure it at the extremes.

Check out the FAQ sticky and also read John Palmers How to brew under the link.

brewit2it said:

I read this here so frequently I can't resist commenting. ...

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And guess what..despite this, just on a daily basis we see how many perfectly normal fermentations happen, with little or no airlock actvity.

If this were such a perfect brewing world as you try to prove with your formula, my post count, AND my success rate in terms of brewers taking readings and showing with their hydrometer that fermentation has occured despite their airlock bublling, would be much lower.

*shakes head*

How many threads need to get posted and then answered with gravity readings, before you grasp the simple concept that airlocks sometimes bubble and sometimes they don't, for perfectly normal and successful beers?

schweaty said:

Use a hydrometer or refractometer to check the progress of your fermentation.

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LOL Put a White Collar on that photo and rename it Revvy!

Revvy said:

And guess what..despite this, just on a daily basis we see how many perfectly normal fermentations happen, with little or no airlock actvity.

If this were such a perfect brewing world as you try to prove with your formula, my post count, AND my success rate in terms of brewers taking readings and showing with their hydrometer that fermentation has occured despite their airlock bublling, would be much lower.

*shakes head*

How many threads need to get posted and then answered with gravity readings, before you grasp the simple concept that airlocks sometimes bubble and sometimes they don't, for perfectly normal and successful beers?

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Revy, with all due respect you can shout it from the mountain tops as much as you want, but that makes it religion, not science. Bottom line is to produce the alcohol, you are prodducing a ****load of co2. In fact I just went through and showed you how much. If it aint comming out your airlock then it is getting out some other way. There is really no point in arguing over basic laws of physics and chemistry.

However you are abosolutely correct that you need to take gravity readings to tell when your beer is done.

brewit2it said:

So in fact the airlock really is a tool that directly and linearly measures the rate of fermentation, it just doesn't have the sensitivity to measure it at the extremes.

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Well when you learn how to measure how much gas the airlock is releasing (and I'm sure that different liquids and different styles have varying resistances) and a formula to convert that gas to gravity points let me know. Until then I'm going to be using my hydrometer and refractometer to take precise measurements. I just don't have the time to sit around and wait for bubbling or degassing during the later portion of fermentation.

brewit2it said:

If it aint comming out your airlock then it is getting out some other way.

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So in theory you are saying that it's the production of CO2, not the bubbling of the airlock, that indicates fermentation. Another reason to believe that an airlock is nothing more than a .50 cent piece of cheap plastic made in China and NOT a scientific tool.

schweaty said:

Well when you learn how to measure how much gas the airlock is releasing (and I'm sure that different liquids and different styles have varying resistances) and a formula to convert that gas to gravity points let me know. Until then I'm going to be using my hydrometer and refractometer to take precise measurements. I just don't have the time to sit around and wait for bubbling or degassing during the later portion of fermentation.

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That's good advice. There are lots of reasons not to rely on the airlock for anything but keeping the outside air outside. I think all bewit2it is saying is that CO2 has to escape the fermenter, and if it's not coming out of the airlock, it's coming out somewhere else. This point is so obviously true that it is not worth arguing.

PVH said:

This point is so obviously true that it is not worth arguing.

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Perhaps, but then what is worth arguing? The fact that threads like this are posted daily and it all could be avoided by using the search function or looking at stickies. I'm not trying to be an a$$hole by any means, it just gets old that we beat this dead horse day in and day out.

schweaty said:

Well when you learn how to measure how much gas the airlock is releasing (and I'm sure that different liquids and different styles have varying resistances) and a formula to convert that gas to gravity points let me know. Until then I'm going to be using my hydrometer and refractometer to take precise measurements.

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You're correct that it actually could be done in theory with sensitive enough equipment but why bother? I am certain you missed my point that it I completely understand and agree that you need to measure the OG and FG to know when your beer is done.

NM, answered own question.

schweaty said:

Perhaps, but then what is worth arguing?

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I understand your point. But I don't see how we're at all at odds here. I pointed out that it is not worth wasting time on, and you feel the same way.

Nice graphic, btw.

Yea, I gotta agree with brew2it and PVH here: these are simple laws, and laws they are. schweaty makes an interesting point about measuring the escaped gas and correlating it to gravity points. Actually sounds like a simple experiment to me. Take your blowoff tube and set it inside a completely submerged jar in your starsan bucket. then, you will get a nice CO2 pocket in your jar. Of course, I doubt you'll find a 540L jar anywhere cheap...wait how many gallons are in a litter?

ooh, or maybe rig up a lid for the starsan bucket with, like, a little paddle wheel in a hole (air tight of course) that you can measure how many times it turns. The CO2 will HAVE to turn it on its way out, so we can get a decent measure of how much has escaped. That would probably be more trouble than its worth. Sounds fun though!

yea, i gotta agree with brew2it and pvh here: These are simple laws, and laws they are. Schweaty makes an interesting point about measuring the escaped gas and correlating it to gravity points. Actually sounds like a simple experiment to me. Take your blowoff tube and set it inside a completely submerged jar in your starsan bucket. Then, you will get a nice co2 pocket in your jar. Of course, i doubt you'll find a 540l jar anywhere cheap...wait how many gallons are in a litter?

Ooh, or maybe rig up a lid for the starsan bucket with, like, a little paddle wheel in a hole (air tight of course) that you can measure how many times it turns. The co2 will have to turn it on its way out, so we can get a decent measure of how much has escaped. That would probably be more trouble than its worth. Sounds fun though

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nerd alert!

TTB-J said:

nerd alert!

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Lol, guilty.

Sent from my HTC Vision using Home Brew Talk

ezzieyguywuf said:

Yea, I gotta agree with brew2it and PVH here: these are simple laws, and laws they are. schweaty makes an interesting point about measuring the escaped gas and correlating it to gravity points. Actually sounds like a simple experiment to me. Take your blowoff tube and set it inside a completely submerged jar in your starsan bucket. then, you will get a nice CO2 pocket in your jar. Of course, I doubt you'll find a 540L jar anywhere cheap...wait how many gallons are in a litter?

ooh, or maybe rig up a lid for the starsan bucket with, like, a little paddle wheel in a hole (air tight of course) that you can measure how many times it turns. The CO2 will HAVE to turn it on its way out, so we can get a decent measure of how much has escaped. That would probably be more trouble than its worth. Sounds fun though!

Click to expand...

I was actually thinking an airlock with a known standard volume per bubble and a counter attached

Problem is it still wouldn't tell you the amount of co2 disolved in the wort which would vary significantly depending on temp and amount of headspace, how much it has been aggitated, pH, etc. And I don't think there is any easy way to measure it directly and would require a very expensive instrument.

Heat up (? Slightly?) a hydro sample (co2 sample) and measure escaped gas? Or boil it, capture liquid and subtract that volume from total gas expelled?

Sent from my HTC Vision using Home Brew Talk

PolishStout said:

My first batch, "Muntons Connoisseurs Bock Beer Kit". mixed it up on Saturday evening around 7pm and used about .25 lbs of sugar and 3lbs DME, pitched the yeast at about 69/70*. forgot to check the gravity.

checked it Sunday morning and it was bubbling away quite readily, about 2 or 3 'glugs' per second. I then realized the area where I stored the pail was a bit warm (about 75-80*) so I moved it to a cooler place. checked it later sunday evening and it was still glugging away happily.

I check it today around 3pm and the airlock it completely dead. no activity to be seen whatsover.

did I break it?

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Oh by the way, you can't "break" your beer. everything is fine. This is where you guys who instantly equate a bubbling airlock with "FERMENTATION" seem to miss...An airlock is simply a valve, a vent to release excess co2, to keep your lid on your fermenter and your beer off the ceiling.

It's always going to slow down eventually. The yeast are going to have less fermentables to consume, than they did in the first few days, so they are not going to produce that much EXTRA co2, and therefore the airlock is not going to NEED to blip as fast, if at all.

But that DOESN'T mean the yeast has stopped doing their job....they just don't have that much food to chew....but they're not going to stop, they just don't go to sleep unless the temp dips down to the low 50's, and they just don't die....they MAY eat all the consumables they can in the case of a high grav wort and shut down, like in a barlewine.

But in your NORMAL beer, they are just going to keep working. They are going to slowly slug away until the job is done. Just not as dynamically as they do when they are having the gluttonous orgy of sex and food....it's just like us on thanksgiving....we start slowing down eventually...but we more than likely keep eating. At least until we get to the pumpkin pie...or the midnight snack......

Besides, fermenting the beer is just a part of what the yeast do. If you leave the beer alone, they will go back and clean up the byproducts of fermentation that often lead to off flavors. That's why many brewers skip secondary and leave our beers alone in primary for a month. It leaves plenty of time for the yeast to ferment, clean up after themselves and then fall out, leveing our beers crystal clear, with a tight yeast cake.

Your HYDROMETER is the only BEST indicator of fermentation activity. Nothing else is accurate or consistent...

Unless you take a gravity reading you don't know what's really going on, not by airlock bubbling or by krausen formation. Neither of those signs are effective, they don't tell you exactly where on the fermentation process you are.

The amount of krausen can vary for whatever reason, it can come quick and depart quickly or it can linger long after fermentation is complete, and it all be normal.

And airlocks sometimes bubble or they don't. And airlock is a valve, a vent to release excess co2...NOT a fermentation gauge. It's important to make that distinction, or you'll be panicking everytime a an airlock doesn't bubble, or stops bubbling.

Fermentation is not always "dynamic," just because you don't SEE anything happening, doesn't mean that any-thing's wrong,, and also doesn't mean that the yeast are still not working diligently away, doing what they've been doing for over 4,000 years.

That's why you need to take a gravity reading to know how your fermentation is going, NOT go by airlocks, or size of krausen, or a calendar, the horoscope or the phases of the moon (those things in my mind are equally accurate).

The most important tool you can use is a hydrometer. It's the only way you will truly know when your beer is ready...airlock bubbles and other things are faulty.

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....

Thinking about "doing anything" like repitching, or bottling, or racking, without first taking a hydrometer reading is tantamount to the doctor deciding to cut you open without running any diagnostic tests....Taking one look at you and saying, "Yeah I'm going in." You would really want the doctor to use all means to properly diagnose what's going on?

ok ok I get it, I need to take a gravity reading.

what's the best method for doing so? if my beer is still fermenting don't I run the risk of infecting it if I open the lid? should I drain some beer out of the spigot into a separate container and measure it that way?


btw: thanks for all the feedback and interesting technicality banter!

PolishStout said:

if my beer is still fermenting don't I run the risk of infecting it if I open the lid?

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You know, there is so much all over the place telling brewers, what not to do, do you actually think folks would be saying to use your hydrometer so much? Is it a vast conspiracy to ruin millions of new brewer's batches, so that they flee the hobby and give it a bad rap? Every book, every podcast, every posts talks about gravity of beer...how do you think they get them?

WIth proper care and simple sanitization, you run no risk of infecting your beer by taking a simple gravity reading.

This is what I use, and it works with both buckets and carboys. I replaced the plastic one a year ago with an extra long stainless baster from a kitchen ware store and it is awesome. But the plastic one from any grocery store works fine.



And



Here's what I do....

1) With a spray bottle filled with starsan I spray the lid of my bucket, or the mouth of the carboy, including the bung. Then I spray my turkey baster inside and out with sanitize (or dunking it in a container of sanitizer).

2) Open fermenter.

3) Draw Sample

4) fill sample jar (usualy 2-3 turky baster draws

5)Spray bung or lid with sanitizer again

6) Close lid or bung

6) add hydrometer and take reading

It is less than 30 seconds from the time the lid is removed until it is closed again. More like 15 if you ask me.

Probably less if you have help. And unless a bird flies in your place and lets go with some poop, you should be okay.

But I would wait til next week to even bother taking one, your beer is fine. It is still fermenting away regardless of what your airlock is saying, and if it already reached terminal gravity, letting the yeast clean up after itself is a great thing to do anyway.

PolishStout said:

ok ok I get it, I need to take a gravity reading.

what's the best method for doing so? if my beer is still fermenting don't I run the risk of infecting it if I open the lid? should I drain some beer out of the spigot into a separate container and measure it that way?


btw: thanks for all the feedback and interesting technicality banter!

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I'm assuming you're fermenting in a bottling bucket since you refer to a spigot (could be a conicle or a pot even but that seems unlikely) so you probably don't want to take the sample from the valve since it is probably down at a level inside your cake/sediment on the bottom. The best thing is to have a device specifically for taking a sample. I have this one:

http://morebeer.com/view_product/6356//The_Sample_Taker

It is pretty cool since it is long enough to reach into my 7 gallon carboy, it is self filling , and you can drop your hydrometer right into it to take a reading and even return the sample to the fermenter if you want, although I don't. If you don't have one and don't want to wait until you get one from your LHBS or online, you can remove a sample from the top by pulling your stopper (spray it with sterilizer first if you are paranoid like most of us) and place a sterilized section of hose in and either start a siphon, or just getting a little at a time by letting it fill then plugging the end so it doesn't drain. There is also a technique folks use by putting a bottle filler on the end of the hose then sucking with their mouth, counting on the spring valve in the bottle filler to block any backwash. This approach makes me nervous since your mouth bacteria is probably the number vector for transmitting an infection to your beer.

You can also take samples with a racking cane or the insert of an autosiphon.

Turkey baster is great too, but for me most aren't long enough to reach my beer because my carboy is oversized. With a bucket it would work perfectly. Thats the other thing I like about the sample taker I linked above though, it is quite a bit narrower than the sample jar so you can use a smaller sample. But I agree with Revy here, no hurry to take the sample. You will notice most of the questions of the first timers here is "do I have stuck fermentation" and the answer is almost always, "no, just be more patient".

thanks again for all the fast replies! I'm lovin this forum already!!

I think I will go with pulling the airlock and using the autosiphon. but i will wait probably a week or so before doing it

So, my hydrometer came in a nice little cylindrically shaped, uh, thing. Any reason not to use that to take my readings? The guy tried to sell the the nifty thing with the base that revvy has, but I used it for my OG and didn't really seem to have a problem: its not as tall as the tubey thing revvy has though, so do I run the risk of my hydrometer hitting the bottom when the beer is closer to a SG of 1.000, or is it the other way around? (I really should know this, I'm a mechanical engineer...)

Based on the original post, it sounds like the beer has only been in primary for a few days. I wouldn't even worry about checking the gravity for at least another 2 weeks anyway. If it was actively bubbling at one point, you can be pretty confident that, if nothing else, your beer was at one time actively fermenting enough to need to vent off some CO2.

Just leave it be for 3 weeks, then take a gravity reading. Even if you've reached your FG already, there's no need to rush it to bottling after just 4 days.

ezzieyguywuf said:

So, my hydrometer came in a nice little cylindrically shaped, uh, thing. Any reason not to use that to take my readings? The guy tried to sell the the nifty thing with the base that revvy has, but I used it for my OG and didn't really seem to have a problem: its not as tall as the tubey thing revvy has though, so do I run the risk of my hydrometer hitting the bottom when the beer is closer to a SG of 1.000, or is it the other way around? (I really should know this, I'm a mechanical engineer...)

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If the cylinder the hydrometer came in is taller than the hydrometer, then no, I don't see how it could hit bottom. However, those cylinders tend to be really narrow, so that the hydrometer will often be in contact with the side when you're taking a reading. I don't know how much this affects accuracy, but it's got to be less than ideal.

I wouldn't think it'd affect accuracy all that much. I mean, both the hydrometer and the plastic must have low coefficients of friction.

IT'S BEER! and it's quite tasty for being warm and flat. it seems like theres a little CO2 stuck in solution as there was a good bit of bubbles forming on the sides of the glass and a few bubble clusters on the surface of the bucket beer.

thanks for the reassurance that everything was fine! I used a turkey baster and didn't have any problems with the sampling

the hydrometer read at about 1.010, and I will be checking again in a few days.