After three years of extract and partial mash brewing I finally made the jump to all grain last weekend. All went well - hit my numbers , no boil over, new gear worked well - but I got no airlock activity for a couple days. I figured maybe that was part of the process as well. It did start bubbling but very slowly - not the typical fermentation I'm used to seeing. I went to rack out of primary to make room for another batch while brewing my second all grain last night and it was still in full krausen after a week. I sealed the primary back up and split my batch from last night between two smaller carboys and pitched the yeast. Then it hit me, I didn't aerate the first one at all. It's something I've never had to do in the past as I have never done full volume boils before. I shook the carboys with last night's batch vigorously as I've read described to aerate and sealed them up. This morning they are happily bubbling away. My question is this - is my batch from last week hosed or should I leave it alone and hope for the best? Would it be advisable (or not) to open it back up and stir it up with a sanitized paddle or spoon in an attempt to aerate it or is it too late for that? I need some guidance from those who know. Thank you.
Aeration question
- Thread starter cclloyd
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barleynhops
Well-Known Member
How did you transfer from you kettle to the carboy? if you poured it through a strainer and funnel, then I've found that this agitates the wort quite a bit and should aerate enough for the respiration cycle. If not, then yeah, you likely did not get a good respiration cycle. unfortunately, you cannot go and aerate now. The yeast eventually became active, so the respiration cycle is over. If you added oxygen now, the yeast wouldn't use it. So a couple of questions I would pose before assuming it is an aeration problem:
1) How much yeast did you pitch? Did you have a yeast starter or did you just dump the vial in?
2) What temperature was your wort at before pitching your yeast? What temperature is the room at where you're fermenting?
3) What kind of yeast were you pitching?
These are all things that can effect the level of fermentation activity. A couple of days is a long time, but I've seen this happen as a result of under-pitching. So that could be a factor as well.
1) How much yeast did you pitch? Did you have a yeast starter or did you just dump the vial in?
2) What temperature was your wort at before pitching your yeast? What temperature is the room at where you're fermenting?
3) What kind of yeast were you pitching?
These are all things that can effect the level of fermentation activity. A couple of days is a long time, but I've seen this happen as a result of under-pitching. So that could be a factor as well.
I racked from the boil kettle to primary with an auto-siphon - sanitized of course - the wort temp at racking was about 75F. I pitched an 11.5g packet of US-05 dry so underpitching was not the issue as I use this yeast for most of my beers and have never had any problems with it either dry or rehydrated - I'm almost sure it was the lack of aeration during/after the transfer. The ambient temperature in the fermentation area is 68F. Since it has gotten to krausen it may just take a much longer than normal time to ferment out and I'm hoping that the adverse effects will be minimal. Thanks for the info - I forgot about the cycles that yeast go through and that the respiration would already be done at this point.
Follow up to this - for the minimal airlock activity and worried parent syndrome I get this - today is two weeks in primary and the gravity is at 1.010 - right where it should be and tastes great. I think I'll bottle tonight. Another RDWHAHB lesson learned.
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