First time brewing with whole hops

Hello everyone,

I'm brewing my third ever batch, and it's single hop recipe I was given by a neighbor that brews and grows his own hops. He gave me a big bagful recently that I've dried and on Sunday I made a 5 gallon batch with this recipe. Everything went smoothly, I'm fastidious about keeping things sanitized so I'm not worried about that.

I have a little tip someone gave me where after I pull a sample to test jar to take a gravity reading, I keep it in there, covered, so I can see what's going on in the bucket. Cheap alternative to a glass carboy I guess. The sample in the test jar is clearly fermenting, bubbling away nicely. The fermenting bucket however, no sign of bubbles in the airlock and it's nearly 48 hours since I pitched the yeast.

I opened the bucket to see if there were visible signs of problems (what, I don't know) and noticed that all the hops had gathered at the top, so I just left it.

Question is this - is it likely the wort is fermenting but the hops are trapping the Co2 as there's not a lot of it to 'push past' the hops yet? I'm wondering if I need to repitch the yeast.

Thanks in advance.

The CO2 is getting past the hops about as easily as it is getting past the seal in your bucket lid. Assuming you pulled a relatively representative sample, the sample fermenting is a pretty good indication that it is all fermenting. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I'd be 99.9% confident that you have a small leak in the seal of your bucket lid. This is not a problem - just means that you're not getting any visible airlock activity. This has happened to my last two batches as well, and it kinda sucks because it's beautiful to watch a bubbling airlock. But rest assured that your beer is fermenting and it's extremely unlikely any of the nasties are getting in there.

Thanks! I think a plastic or glass carboy for my primary ferment is the way to go possibly, takes the guesswork out of it. Plus it's interesting to watch. Well, relatively. I'm just curious whether there's any differences brewing with whole hops vs. pellets. I do know this for sure... when I took the bucket lid off, the hop aroma was really strong. Hope I got the quantities right, it smelled like Hopslam!!