Airlock stopped

I brewed my first on Sunday night. It was a coppers IPA can I added two lbs of dry malt extract and 2 ozs of cascade hops. Og 1050. By the next morning I had a steady pace of bubbles in the airlock. This morning it was bubbling about every 4 seconds and by Tuesday evening it has stopped.

What should I do?

You are going to walk away and ignore whether or not your airlock is bubbling, it means absolutely nothing whatsoever.

irlock bubbling and fermentation are not the same thing. You have to separate that from your mindset. Airlock bubbling can be a sign of fermentation, but not a good one, because the airlock will often blip or not blip for various other reasons...so it is a tenuous connection at best.

If your airlock was bubbling and stopped---It doesn't mean fermentation has stopped.

If you airlock isn't bubbling, it doesn't mean your fermentation hasn't started....

If your airlock starts bubbling, it really doesn't matter.

If your airlock NEVER bubbles, it doesn't mean anything is wrong or right.

Your airlock is not a fermentation gauge, it is a VALVE to release excess co2. If it bubbles it is because it needs to, if it doesn't, it just means it doesn't need too...

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......

So just relax, nothing is wrong, so you don't have to do anything.

I suggest you wait another week, then take a gravity reading once a day for 3 days. If they are the same each day, keg/bottle. It's probably done with the bulk of fermentation at this point.

Thanks for the answer. I will check it on Sunday the seventh day what should my ending gravity be so I will now if it is ok or a problem.

Depends on your recipe, but I would guess 1.010 - 1.016 ish.

Chances are that fermentation is completed if the airlock stopped. If you have a tight seal on your fermenter and an airlock installed, while the beer is fermenting it is creating co2. The co2 will displace any other air in the fermenter and will need somewhere to escape. SO, if the airlock has stopped bubbling and you have a good seal on your fermenter chances are fermentation is either completed or close to completion.

Leave the beer alone for 2+ weeks and as other have said take gravity readings with your hydrometer. If the gravity doesn't change for 3 days you can bottle, keg or let it sit and condition for as long as you want

I agree with earwig. Let your beer have a chance to clean up after itself for letting it go for atleast 2 weeks after primary fermentation is done. This extra time will be well worth it in the end.

rebelmgr99 said:

I brewed my first on Sunday night. It was a coppers IPA can I added two lbs of dry malt extract and 2 ozs of cascade hops. Og 1050. By the next morning I had a steady pace of bubbles in the airlock. This morning it was bubbling about every 4 seconds and by Tuesday evening it has stopped.

What should I do?

Click to expand...

Biochemically speaking, you introduced yeast into the wort which has malt sugar and dissolved O2. The yeast are hungry - and they initially gobble up all that O2 and malt sugar like gluttenous pigs. They excrete CO2 and H2O (aerobic fermentation; which is why your airlock was going bonkers because of the CO2) and they multiply. As there is exponentially more sugar than O2 dissolved in solution, the O2 is quickly used up - and fermentation soon switches over to anaerobic fermentation. CO2 production slows down and now EtOH (alcohol) is excreted.

Anaerobic fermentation is a much slower process than regular aerobic fermentation. CO2 production slows way down so your airlock responds (or rather, stops bobbing) accordingly. Right now, your little yeasty friends are finishing up eating the remaining sugar to make alcohol. Soon, they will be out of sugar and will go dormant until bottling time.

At bottling time, you'll add priming sugar to your wort. Again, the yeast gobble up the priming sugar to create more CO2 (carbonation) within your bottles.

Carbonation occurs in a few days...but the important thing about bottle conditioning is to marry the flavors. Think of conditioning like a great steak: the more it ages (several weeks), the better it gets.