Hi everyone,
I used to live in Kentucky, where I did my share of extract brewing off and on over the past decade or so. Enough to know what I'm doing, but not enough to really call myself a "master". I recently moved to West Texas and started up again. My first brew day was last Saturday, where I brewed two extract kits, a pumpkin ale (OG 1.045, Safale S-04 maintained @ 64-65ºF) and a brown porter (OG 1.046, Safale S-05 maintained @ 62-63ºF). For once, brew day was absolutely textbook for me. The porter had a rapid fermentation from 12 hours out, so I had to do a little cleanup and add Fermcap-S, and the pumpkin ale started fermenting on the second day.
Here's the strange thing. It's been a solid week now, and the krausen still hasn't dropped; the fermentation in both was energetic enough from the beginning that this surprises me. No bubbling, but my big mouth bubblers have never been trustworthy on that front. I thought I accounted for every variable when I brewed. Same brew equipment as always. I used extract kits, maintained my temperature during the boil, and even used bottled water (west Lubbock's water is tainted with jet fuel, so no way would I use it). I've brewed these types of beers several times, and have used these yeast strains several times as well, so I thought I was pretty accustomed to how they act. I never saw this before, so I'm not sure what's going on. I would have thought it was just one of those things if one of my beers was doing this, but since it's two different types with two different yeast strains, this is moving from an anecdote to becoming data.
I haven't taken a gravity reading because I wasn't sure if disrupting the krausen would be bad. I've never had this happen, so it's never come up.
The only difference I can think of is the climate. My home in Kentucky was 500' above sea level, hot and very humid. Here in Texas, I'm at 3000', very hot and semi-arid. Would that affect this?
Thanks!
I used to live in Kentucky, where I did my share of extract brewing off and on over the past decade or so. Enough to know what I'm doing, but not enough to really call myself a "master". I recently moved to West Texas and started up again. My first brew day was last Saturday, where I brewed two extract kits, a pumpkin ale (OG 1.045, Safale S-04 maintained @ 64-65ºF) and a brown porter (OG 1.046, Safale S-05 maintained @ 62-63ºF). For once, brew day was absolutely textbook for me. The porter had a rapid fermentation from 12 hours out, so I had to do a little cleanup and add Fermcap-S, and the pumpkin ale started fermenting on the second day.
Here's the strange thing. It's been a solid week now, and the krausen still hasn't dropped; the fermentation in both was energetic enough from the beginning that this surprises me. No bubbling, but my big mouth bubblers have never been trustworthy on that front. I thought I accounted for every variable when I brewed. Same brew equipment as always. I used extract kits, maintained my temperature during the boil, and even used bottled water (west Lubbock's water is tainted with jet fuel, so no way would I use it). I've brewed these types of beers several times, and have used these yeast strains several times as well, so I thought I was pretty accustomed to how they act. I never saw this before, so I'm not sure what's going on. I would have thought it was just one of those things if one of my beers was doing this, but since it's two different types with two different yeast strains, this is moving from an anecdote to becoming data.
I haven't taken a gravity reading because I wasn't sure if disrupting the krausen would be bad. I've never had this happen, so it's never come up.
The only difference I can think of is the climate. My home in Kentucky was 500' above sea level, hot and very humid. Here in Texas, I'm at 3000', very hot and semi-arid. Would that affect this?
Thanks!
