Something may be wrong with my 2nd beer.

Our second beer..

The caribou slobber kit..

I *think* it might have been a bit warm, it fermented like crazy for two days and stopped.. then I get a picture text of the top.. not looking good.

We unfortunately didn't measure OG.
AND we don't have precise temp control of the fermentation room.. but it should have been 68-70deg. using danstar windsor yeast.

Can you tell what went wrong?

 

From what i can see nothing went wrong. The stuff on the top is just yeast rafts. Mine look like that all the time. Just because your last batch didnt look like that doesnt meaan anything. They all look different. As for the gravity, since its a kit you can go by the OG that the kit says.



Cheers

 

Yup,krausen residue on the glass,yeast rafts on the beer. Normal.

 

Dude. you made my day.

I can't wait to try this beer.

I'll grab a wine theif and check the gravity, I plan to just leave this in its primary for ~3 weeks and bottle.

 

I just did the Caribou Slobber this weekend (1 of 2 first batch beers) from an extract kit. I pitched (dry yeast/rehydrated) at around 76 degrees @ 7pm on Saturday night.

By Sunday at 11am it was like 80 degrees! (and darned near boiling!) ha-ha!
The krausen was way high and my primary bucket was warm to the touch. I had no idea the temps would go up so fast and furious!
I had to cool it off....so I put the primary bucket in some cold water and got the temps down to 64 degrees....it continued to bubble nicely the remainder of the day.

But today I notice a big slowdown in activity, bubbling quite slow...and I'm concerned the excessive heat initially hurt my yeast, or made it all ferment too fast. I don't want under fermented beer or OFF FLAVORS due to the initial high heat.

Wonder why it took off so quickly and vigorously, as where my WHEATEN BEATDOWN (wheat extract beer) had a nice 64 degree temp and never varied. It's still bubbling nicely as I type. No slowdown yet on this beer. Seems to be fermenting good.

 

You do know water boils at 212* F correct? 100*C is boiling

 

I'd meant to stop and get a stick on temp gauge for the carboy. It was fermenting so much more furiously than my first beer that I opened the garage and wafted cool air into its room a few times. I have an old fridge at my parent's house that I need to pickup and get setup to ferment in!

 

I don't check my gravity until at least the 3 week point, most times not even until I keg. At that point I know fermentation is done and ready. Every time you open and "check" on it, your risk infection. Just be patient and let it go, hard to do, but worth it in the end.

Cheers

 

Yeah, when I said "darned near boiling" I was being sarcastic....and what I meant was the airlock was non-stop bubbling vigorously. (looked like it was boiling!)

 

High ferm temps in the 80s are likely to produce Fusels, fingers crossed man

 

You referencing Wil Wheaton? Don't get the trekkies mad.

 

Yeah...they are.
Toes crossed too.

I had no idea the fermentation would take off like that and being a newbie to it all, I didn't realize it could get so warm so fast. I figured if the outside of the bucket said 76 at pitching....it would only go DOWN from there. (now I learned the heat generated from fermentation, could make it go UP!)

Maybe it'll still be decent and drinkable.
I've heard a lot of folks say, it's really HARD to ruin a homebrew....even if you make a couple mistakes along the way. It's still usually better than store bought? (Hopefully, I caught it in time?)

 

Looks great to me... Yeast rafts

 

finally got a fermometer - its steady at 62/64 in there

We just racked it into the secondary yesterday.. looks nice.
(and we bottled our first beer, yay)

 

Let the beer sit another 3-7 days to clean up off flavors & settle out clear or just slightly misty. But that is best done in primary.