How much airlock bubbling is too much?

Hi, I just started my first home brew batch ever.

I didn't rehydrate my yeast before pitching and my OG was oddly enough 1.045 which is lower than what the kit suggested. 4 hours after pitching my airlock was bubbling violently... I tried to search for whats normal bubbling for fermentation and I cant find anything quite like this. I asked my neighbor who has brewed dozens of times and he has no idea either, so he asked his friend and so on and the only thing anyone can say is they could see that happening if it was high gravity...

Just to try to get an idea of whats going on i took some video of it... its been going strong for 8 hours like this.


Should I be worried about explosion? This is a Brewer's Best Robust Porter extract kit but I added 2lbs of cherries/cherry extract to the wort after flame out on the boil...

Thanks for any advice you guys have.

After about 24 hour's of this much activity it dropped to about 1 bubbled every 2-3 seconds for 12 hours and now I haven't seen a bubble at all... I still don't have an explanation for what happened though...

Good choice on the Rivertown Wit. Each beer will be different that airlock activity is just fine. Just remember to check your hydrometer periodically. That is the only way to truly tell if fermentation is happening. I pitched on a yeast cake once with a blow off tube and it sounded like a machine gun! What yeast did you use?

Make sure you keep an eye on your temps when you get a real active fermentation as they can spike outside of your yeasts "sweet zone"

I wouldn't pay too much attention to how much or how little an airlock bubbles. The only way to know what's going on with your fermentation is to take a hydrometer reading. Some people have had no bubbling whatsoever & still had a complete fermentation.

I usually take the "better safe than sorry approach" & set-up a blowoff tube running into a growler about 1/4 filled with sanitizing solution. That way if the fermentation gets violent, there's a very low risk of an explosion since the krausen has somewhere to go. Airlocks can get clogged, then the pressure builds up from the CO2 release in your bucket...then boom! You have krausen all over the ceiling, walls, & floor.

Some sort of English Ale yeast, I threw the packet away so I'm not sure exactly what yeast it was... Whatever came with the kit...

The gravity had dropped from 1.045 to 1.020 in the first 24 hours so at least I know its moving along...

Ill have to pick up some tubing for that purpose...

Thanks for the replies.

What temperature are you fermenting at? A high temp will get the yeast going faster, but may cause off-flavors.

~70F depending on how many overheated people walk into my small apartment

It was most likely nottingham yeast... Its pretty forgiving because it ferments very clean.

Airlocks mean nothing. The rate or lack of or whether or not it bubbles at all, or if it starts and stops has more relation to the environment the fermenter is in, rather than fermentation itself. All it is is a vent, a valve to let our excess gas, especially co2, nothing else. It's not a fermentation gauge whatsoever.

Nice, man. That sucker is cranking. You can see bubbles entering the very bottom of the airlock too so you were probably right up against the lid on that.

Whether or not the airlock is an accurate gauge of fermentation or not (it's not) isn't really the issue. The issue is that regardless of what it indicates, you are bubbling like a mofo and you want to makes sure the thing isn't gonna blow.

Overall, I'd say the answer to "how much bubbling is too much" has to be "when it's more than the airlock can expunge". Meaning, the throughput on the airlock can't keep up with the volume of gas being generated. I think that threshold would probably be pretty hard to cross, unless your airlock got clogged with krausen or something like I've seen some 3-piece airlocks do.

Yeah, I was more worried about explosion than whether or not its fermenting... I was lightly pushing on the lid every 4-6 hours to release the pressure and make sure it wouldn't explode....

Well this thread really caught my eye, as this is exactly how my primary was bubbling within an hour after pitching my yeast and beginning fermentation. Today, less than 24 hours later there is no activity at all in the airlock.

This is my 1st batch, or 2nd I guess if you count the ale I brewed back in 1994. I've been trying to figure out if I "have ruined my beer" lol. I'm doing a bavarian weizen and just following the kit directions, which said to cool my wort after boil to 70-85 degrees. I got it to 84 and pitched my dry yeast, which was activated in a cup of sterile water 90F for 15 minutes . . . . all per the directions, which now say ferment 60-70F for 4 days and move to 2ndary fermenter for another 4-7.

The more I read now it sounds like 84F was too warm to start fermentation and that sent the yeast into high motion. I'm too nooby to know if this is normal for this type beer - ferments this high initially for particular yeast flavors. All I know is it started bubbling pretty darn quick after pitching and now stopped.

mrkartoom said:

Well this thread really caught my eye, as this is exactly how my primary was bubbling within an hour after pitching my yeast and beginning fermentation. Today, less than 24 hours later there is no activity at all in the airlock.

The more I read now it sounds like 84F was too warm to start fermentation and that sent the yeast into high motion. I'm too nooby to know if this is normal for this type beer - ferments this high initially for particular yeast flavors. All I know is it started bubbling pretty darn quick after pitching and now stopped.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is what I did with my first brew. I pitched around 84F in an Amber Ale. I had to work the next day so when I got home, there was no airlock activity. I took a hydrometer reading and I got the same reading three days in a row. Though, it did not taste bad, just flat beer. So it is still in the primary as I am letting the yeast "clean-up" after itself. You have probably seen that this is recommended highly. I would doubt that your beer is ruined, it just might have a funny flavor...then again, it might be really good! Good luck!

kevokie said:

Yeah, this is what I did with my first brew. I pitched around 84F in an Amber Ale. I had to work the next day so when I got home, there was no airlock activity. I took a hydrometer reading and I got the same reading three days in a row. Though, it did not taste bad, just flat beer. So it is still in the primary as I am letting the yeast "clean-up" after itself. You have probably seen that this is recommended highly. I would doubt that your beer is ruined, it just might have a funny flavor...then again, it might be really good! Good luck!

Click to expand...

Hopefully it will be decent brew and not too strong flavors I don't want. I will let it stand for a week in the primary and then get a reading. I'll know pitch temp better next time regardless, so at least I've learned something.

Just an update, the problem was(most likely) the cherries I added as my neighbor did the same with his brew the Monday after mine and his exploded within 24 hours all over his closet...



I think since he used fresh cherries only it took slightly longer to take off like mad(I'm guessing cherries contain a lot of whatever type of sugar creates large amounts of CO2) since he checked it 8 hours after he pitched it and it was going normal and when he got home from work it looked like that...

Hopefully it still tastes good, but the gravity has dropped to over 6% abv and I racked to the secondary after 6 days and its still fermenting in the secondary, its even developed another yeast cake of equal size in about 4 days... I took a new sample when i racked to the secondary and it tasted okay... very average porter taste with a slight alcohol burn on the way down...

I think it's something that can possibly be troubling during the violent fermentation. I had such an active fermentation in my bucket once that the lid started bowing and the airlock wasn't bubbling so much, but was whistling. I ended up unseating the lid and leaving it on top of the bucket for a day or so. Got to respect that Belgian yeast, especially at 75 degrees!

I use a 3/4" PVC pipe for blow-off, if it burps into a mason jar 2-4 times per second, we have a good fermentation going! So... that small S-lock on a bucket? just business as usual.

M_C

Yeah, I plan to build a more robust airlock in the future...