After five days in the bucket, what should I expect regarding the airlock bubbling?

After five days in the bucket, what should I expect regarding the airlock bubbling? Seems like there is no bubbling happening with the airlock. Should I be worried that the batch is bad?

 

Question time...

What are you brewing? What kind of yeast? What's the temperature at? What temp did you pitch at? Has there been airlock activity up to this point and now it's died out? Or has there been zero visible activity?

 

Airlock activity or lack thereof is no indication of a bad batch...in fact, airlock activity is only an indication of air flowing through your airlock. Sanitation, ingredients, temperature, and patience will yield a good batch, not bubbles.

 

If you have taken a gravity sample before it started fermenting, I would suggest you take another one and see where your beer is sitting. no activity could mean most of the yeast are done, but now they need to clean up. is there still a layer of froth on the top of the beer?

 

Airlocks do not mean anything. stop paying attention to them. take readings.

 

Is no one going to correlate this guy to the beerdrink member who creates similar threads?

 

depends, after 5 days on some ale yeasts fermentation could actually be done. we need more info. ale or lager? was there activity prior to the 5 days? temp when yeast pitched? is there any kraussen? you get the picture.

 

Did you see any bubbles ever?

I personally don't like the adage that airlock means nothing, only because I've never ever had an airlock not bubble at least a few days. If I were fermenting a beer and didn't see any activity at all after 5 days (actually for me, after 3 days) then I would open it up, take a look and also take a gravity reading, to see if the yeast were doing anything at all.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that airlock activity only means you have air moving through the airlock, but if you never saw a bubble in it at all, I would say, from my personal experience, it's as likely that your yeast never took off as it is you have a big enough leak to let out that much CO2 to not bubble at all. If you never saw a bubble, imo, that would be worth taking a look at what's going on. If you did see bubbles, disregard everything else I said and just let it ride a few more days.

If you are using a bucket, My first course of action, before just opening the bucket, would be to get a bright flashlight and turn the lights off in the room you are in. Don't open the bucket. Turn the flashlight on and set it light down on the lid. This should give enough light in the bucket that you would see the remnants of the Krousen ring just above the level of the beer. It will be pretty distinctive compared to the beer as it looks messy with usually an uneven line. If nothing has happened, you'll see a distinctly level line. My guess is, you'll see the krausen and can then let it sti for a few more days then take a gravity reading.

If you don't see krausen, then I'd consider a repitch of new yeast.

 

Don't forget "Did you read all of the Stickys?"