what happened to the bubbles??

[Dkidwell83]

I tossed my first baych in the fermenter a week ago today and for the first 36 hours or so it was bubblin like crazy. it slowed almost to a halt by 48 and since i havent heard a peep from it. is all lost or is it ready for the gelatin finings?

 

[bradsul]

The safest way to check is to take a gravity reading. If you don't have a hydrometer you can also check and see if there is still a layer of foam on the top of the beer, that would indicate that the yeast are still active. You don't want to rack to secondary until that foam falls.

If you have no foam on the top, you could play it safe and give the fermenter a swirl to rouse the yeast and give it another week in primary (won't hurt it at all).

 

[casebrew]

The warmer the brew, the faster it goes. It may be donenow, if you've kept it in a 70 degree room.

A hydrometer reading would help about now, but:

Some say a hydometer only makes you worry, others say it alleviates worry.

 

[Goober]

So it might be the higher temps that are speeding up the process? I did a three gallon batch with a pack of yeast for five gallons. I pitched the yeast at 1500 yesterday it was cranking like crazy. This morning (0900) it's not doing anything. The foam fell as well. I live in Houston so it's pretty warm. Keeping it cool in my place is knocking the temp down to 76. Usually it's right at 79-81. So is 18 hours feesible under those conditions?



I took a reading and if I go by that, it's ready. It's in the secondary fermenter now.

 

[Thalon]

So it might be the higher temps that are speeding up the process? I did a three gallon batch with a pack of yeast for five gallons. I pitched the yeast at 1500 yesterday it was cranking like crazy. This morning (0900) it's not doing anything. The foam fell as well. I live in Houston so it's pretty warm. Keeping it cool in my place is knocking the temp down to 76. Usually it's right at 79-81. So is 18 hours feesible under those conditions?

I took a reading and if I go by that, it's ready. It's in the secondary fermenter now.

Yes, ideally you would be able to keep the beer at 60-75 for ales and 35-55 for lagers during fermentation. The higher the temp within those ranges, the faster fermentation will go but the more likely it will be that it will develop off-flavors.

One method to keep the beer temp a few degrees below room temp is to wrap it with a wet towel, and if available, have a fan blow gently on the towel.

I'm curious as to exactly what those readings you took are. How did you manage to get a 3 gallon batch size? Was this a custom recipe from raw ingredients or was it a kit with pre-measured ingredients? If you got a 5 gallon kit but only boiled 2 or 3 gallons, you're supposed to add water when it's done cooling to get the total volume up to 5 gallons before pitching the yeast and fermenting.

 

[rmullins]

i'm a bit worried with the temperature for my first brew right now. Its down around 65-67 and there really isn't a warmer place in the house right now as we hit a pretty cool week.

 

[rmullins]

Temperature stabilized at 70, but at about 44 hours in the primary this is all I have gotten in terms of bubbles. Should I be worried?

 

[Melana]

When I first read the post I thought of the 'the Bubble' quote from Beerfest.

 

[bradsul]

Temperature stabilized at 70, but at about 44 hours in the primary this is all I have gotten in terms of bubbles. Should I be worried?

I would wait up to 72 hours before I started to worry. It's also possible that fermentation is proceeding as normal but your bucket simply doesn't seal completely. You could try carefully cracking the lid to see if there is any signs of fermentation.