Beer_Pirate
Active Member
Last night I brewed the Tongue Splitter extract kit from Northern Brewer.com, and this morning before I left for work, I checked the carboy. We were bubbling through the blowoff tube, but it was more what I would expect to see at the end of a vigorous fermentation, and the kraeusen is only around a 1/4 inch thick... it doesn't even completely cover the surface of the wort. yeast was pitched ~6 hrs prior. Am I needlessly worried, or is there something I can do when I get home tonight to help fix this if it hasn't gotten any better by then?
I followed my typical brewing procedures with the exception of the wort chiller and aerator:
bring 2 gallons to mash temp (~150-165 F or so), steep specialty grains for ~30min, sparge with ~1 gallon hot tap water (~130F), turn heat back on and at first sign of boil, turn heat back off, add extract, bring back to a boil. Once boiling begin hop schedule.
This is the second brew where i've employed a copper coil immersion chiller, and an aquarium pump aerator. Last brew these things helped immensely. by the time I woke up next morning the fermentation was flying! next morning there was kraeusen already coming out of the blow off.
After we aerated this time, I let it set in the aeration bucket for ~30min (watched a family guy episode on hulu.com) to allow more of the hops and break to settle. Then, when transferring to the carboy, I did what I could to keep the siphon only pulling the clearest wort, but some break did get in.
At the end, in an effort to get as much usable wort out as possible, we cleaned and sanitized my French Press and squeezed probably another beer's worth wort from the hops in the bottom. I then took a grav reading, which was a little high, so I dropped in about another half gallon or so of water to bring the OG more in line with the target.
The yeast pitched was a Wyeast smack pack, that I smacked the night before. It was all the way puffed out, but wasn't drum tight. seemed pretty viable. The OG of the wort was 1.045, so its not like I should have needed a starter.
I know i'm probably needlessly worried, but when you brew on saturday and get one kind of result, then brew on wednesday and get another, and you did damn close the same thing on both you tend to get a little worried... atleast I do :/
I followed my typical brewing procedures with the exception of the wort chiller and aerator:
bring 2 gallons to mash temp (~150-165 F or so), steep specialty grains for ~30min, sparge with ~1 gallon hot tap water (~130F), turn heat back on and at first sign of boil, turn heat back off, add extract, bring back to a boil. Once boiling begin hop schedule.
This is the second brew where i've employed a copper coil immersion chiller, and an aquarium pump aerator. Last brew these things helped immensely. by the time I woke up next morning the fermentation was flying! next morning there was kraeusen already coming out of the blow off.
After we aerated this time, I let it set in the aeration bucket for ~30min (watched a family guy episode on hulu.com) to allow more of the hops and break to settle. Then, when transferring to the carboy, I did what I could to keep the siphon only pulling the clearest wort, but some break did get in.
At the end, in an effort to get as much usable wort out as possible, we cleaned and sanitized my French Press and squeezed probably another beer's worth wort from the hops in the bottom. I then took a grav reading, which was a little high, so I dropped in about another half gallon or so of water to bring the OG more in line with the target.
The yeast pitched was a Wyeast smack pack, that I smacked the night before. It was all the way puffed out, but wasn't drum tight. seemed pretty viable. The OG of the wort was 1.045, so its not like I should have needed a starter.
I know i'm probably needlessly worried, but when you brew on saturday and get one kind of result, then brew on wednesday and get another, and you did damn close the same thing on both you tend to get a little worried... atleast I do :/
