Airlock question

[Olaf]

Ok, so I brewed my second batch of allgrain yesterday- 8gal. of an Irish Red, and everything went like it was supposed to. I cooled it to 70 deg. before pitching the yeast, and the carbuoys are in a dark corner of my garage which stays between 62 and 68 deg. at this time of year. I split the batch evenly and put 4gal in each of two 5gal glass carbuoys. I figure with that amount of extra space in the carbuoys it would be allright to just put airlocks in each. I go to check on them this morning and I see what appears to be a (for lack of a better description) a vacuum being set up in the airlocks/carbuoys (the water "barrier" being sucked back up into the airlock). Any thoughts on what's going on?

 

[held79]

Sounds like your wort was warmer than your basement. When the air in the carboy cooled it shrunk creating a small vacuum in your airlock. Once fermentation gets going it will push back out. No need to worry.

 

[AnOldUR]

This is why I like the "S" style airlocks. They bubble backwards rather than suck my airlock fluid (vodka) into the wort like the three piece airlock can.

 

[pcollins]

+1

I bought a 6.5 gallon carboy for the same reason as you're filling to 4 gallons. I would still keep an eye on your carboys for extra blow off. I thought i would have enough head space for sure but I still get a fair bit of blow off depending on the recipe.

Either way, RDWHAHB!

 

[Malintent]

yup.. I cool to 70 cause I get +2 degrees from active yeast.. so the area is 68. If the yeast doesn't pick up within the first 8 hours or so, cooling will pull the air in. That is definately an advantage of the 'two piece'

 

[Olaf]

Thanks for the replies. Next time I will look to see what the temp is in the basement and cool the wort to that instead of a straight 70 and pitch the yeast.