Oh God, I need help.
I brewed up a brown ale yesterday and transferred it to my 5 gallon better bottle carboy. When I went to check to see if fermentation had started about 12 hours later, I saw no activity. What I did see was a ring of wort surrounding the bottom of the bottle. I was hoping that this was wort spilled while moving the bottle in my basement, I cleaned up the spill. Sure enough, I checked back this morning and found more wort and still no fermentation.
A couple of questions:
1. Most importantly, do you think this batch is ruined by the slow leak? It's really very slow, so I don't think I will lose a lot of volume. My concern is the breach in the bottle and possible infection. If so I should just dump it I suppose.
2. If the beer isn't necessarily ruined, why is this thing not fermenting? I pitched a rehydrated packet of BRY-97 at the proper pitching temp (approx 70deg) and aerated using O2 injection for 2 minutes. My basement is a little cold, but I have a heat wrap on there with temperature controller to keep it steady at 68deg. Since the fermentation wasn't happening, I just bumped it up to 70deg.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I brewed up a brown ale yesterday and transferred it to my 5 gallon better bottle carboy. When I went to check to see if fermentation had started about 12 hours later, I saw no activity. What I did see was a ring of wort surrounding the bottom of the bottle. I was hoping that this was wort spilled while moving the bottle in my basement, I cleaned up the spill. Sure enough, I checked back this morning and found more wort and still no fermentation.
A couple of questions:
1. Most importantly, do you think this batch is ruined by the slow leak? It's really very slow, so I don't think I will lose a lot of volume. My concern is the breach in the bottle and possible infection. If so I should just dump it I suppose.
2. If the beer isn't necessarily ruined, why is this thing not fermenting? I pitched a rehydrated packet of BRY-97 at the proper pitching temp (approx 70deg) and aerated using O2 injection for 2 minutes. My basement is a little cold, but I have a heat wrap on there with temperature controller to keep it steady at 68deg. Since the fermentation wasn't happening, I just bumped it up to 70deg.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.