Dextersmom
Well-Known Member
Last night my roomate comes and wakes me up saying something about my beer making noise. I say to him its just the airlock bubbling and that its ok....yeah i was way off. this one being my second brew ever. I haven't actually had the first hand experience with highly active yeast in a higher gravity wort (1.080...first brew was ony 1.052). one day in the airlock was bubbling about once every second. later that day krausen was foaming out at an alarming rate. I knew i had to do something or risk making a mess and ruining my witkap clone.
I whipped up some sanitizer in a bucket altered a rubber stopper so that it could accomodate a bit of tubing from the siphon that came with my kit (i had extra from the auto siphon i purchased). long story short I made a blow off in what i considered to be record time and under macguyver like circumstances.
this was also the first run of me using a glass carboy...i was surprised to see how much activity actually takes place during the primary stage. The "churning" that everyone mentions, I always to to be like bubbling slightly. Boy was I off. the wort is quite active and looks almost like a science fiction movie. I also moved the primary to a slightly cooler location. The room that it was in initially during the past few weeks was around 65 - 68. But with the recent thaw i estimated it to be around 70. knowing that the temperature in the primary during the active stage could be much hotter than the ambient temps I got worried that I was fermenting too high and was going to produce off flavors. I moved the primary into a room that was back down to 62-64. I'm realizing now that not having control of the thermostat is going to be a problem. My landlord really isn't that bright when it comes to energy conservation and will turn the heat on and leave it on whether it needs to be on or not. So now i'll have to be on point just to make sure my temps are ok.
wow sorry for the rant....any comments or anything or even any digs at me for the rant are all welcome.
Thanks!
I whipped up some sanitizer in a bucket altered a rubber stopper so that it could accomodate a bit of tubing from the siphon that came with my kit (i had extra from the auto siphon i purchased). long story short I made a blow off in what i considered to be record time and under macguyver like circumstances.
this was also the first run of me using a glass carboy...i was surprised to see how much activity actually takes place during the primary stage. The "churning" that everyone mentions, I always to to be like bubbling slightly. Boy was I off. the wort is quite active and looks almost like a science fiction movie. I also moved the primary to a slightly cooler location. The room that it was in initially during the past few weeks was around 65 - 68. But with the recent thaw i estimated it to be around 70. knowing that the temperature in the primary during the active stage could be much hotter than the ambient temps I got worried that I was fermenting too high and was going to produce off flavors. I moved the primary into a room that was back down to 62-64. I'm realizing now that not having control of the thermostat is going to be a problem. My landlord really isn't that bright when it comes to energy conservation and will turn the heat on and leave it on whether it needs to be on or not. So now i'll have to be on point just to make sure my temps are ok.
wow sorry for the rant....any comments or anything or even any digs at me for the rant are all welcome.
Thanks!
