Fermenting beer with no foam??

[markiemark]

Hi all,

I recently made my first attempt at homebrewing, using a brown ale kit I bought online from williams brewing. I'll try to keep this short, but basically I am seeing no foam/head in my primary fermenting bucket. Should i worry? Is it fermenting? Is the yeast dead?
starting gravity (9 hours after i pitched yeast...I forgot!) was 1.040
3 days later it was at 1.020
Its now been 7 days in fermenter.

The details:

I boiled wort for an hour, added malt extract, hops, according to instructions, cooled wort in bathtub until it was about 80 degrees. about a half hour before it was cooled to 80, I put my dry yeast in a cup of 90 degree water, let it sit with foil to cover the cup, and it foamed up quite a bit (which makes me think the yeast should be working.)
Anyway, transferred wort to primary fermenter, pitched the yeast when the wort was at 80 degrees.

I only stirred it for maybe 30 seconds, and not very vigorously. Could this be the problem?

capped the lid, put the airlock on. looked at airlock everyday, no bubbling action. (there are a few tiny bubbles inside airlock, but no active bubbling) And no frothy foamy head on top of beer. Its been 7 days in the fermenter.
Oh and I forgot to take a hydrometer reading before I pitched yeast, but took one 9 hours after I pitched, and it read 1.040. My apartment has been at about 70 degrees. I took another hydro reading 3 days later and it read 1.020.

Any ideas?? Thanks!

 

[techrunner]

RDWHAHB man, its probably cruising right along. it may have foamed up and then died down when you weren't looking. odds are you're making beer. check back on the gravity in a few more days.

 

[markiemark]

Ok so its now been in the primary fermenter for 10 days. The hydrometer reading is still at 1.020. Think it is still going or did it stop fermenting? Should I continue to wait longer? Thanks for the help!

 

[COLObrewer]

Many extract brews will stop at 1.020, however the yeast will still be cleaning up their byproducts for another week or so. Your beer will be better if you leave it in primary for about 3 weeks, also there is no need to check the gravity daily.

Sometimes there is no bubbling in the airlock especially with buckets, it just means there isn't a seal on the lid, airlocks are merely a means to let co2 escape (As revvy would say " It is not a magic fermentation guage") The only way to know for sure if fermentation has taken place is with gravity readings, not to worry on the seal because co2 is heavier than air and will blanket the brew protecting it from oxygen.

 

[markiemark]

ok cool I'll let it settle then and gets to bottling in a week or so. Thanks for the replies and I'll let u know how the beer tastes later on!

 

[samc]

Taste it now!

New brewers should get into the habit of tasting everything at every step of the process. You can skip the chemicals/minerals, sanitizers but you should get familiar with all the other things in brewing.

If you taste it now and it is sickly sweet why bother to carb it up. You would either try to fix it now or dump it.

 

[markiemark]

Hi all,
Thought I'd let you all know how things turned out and ask one more question for future reference...

So, the finishing gravity was 1.019. I bottled the beer, let it sit in bottles unrefrigerated for 4 weeks. Then refrigerated a six pack and gave it a try. Here's the problem...The beer was waaaaaay overcarbonated!!
Loud hiss when I opened the first one, no spillover, but when I poured it in a glass (tilted, slow pour) it was 95% head. I kept waiting for beer to settle, poured more, etc, til it was less head and more beer. The taste of the beer I was actually pleased with, minus the carbonation!

So what happened? I've read I either bottled too early or added too much sugar. But I actually waited 3 weeks to bottle, and I used the prepackaged amount of sugar that came with my Williams brewing kit. The batch made exactly 48 12oz bottles.

Only thing I can think of was that around the time of bottling day we were having a heat wave here in Southern California. Temps in the 80's and 90's, No AC in my apartment. Could this have caused the yeast to reactivate?

Any suggestions for next time?

Thanks everyone for helping me get started!

 

[Yooper]

Hi all,
Thought I'd let you all know how things turned out and ask one more question for future reference...

So, the finishing gravity was 1.019. I bottled the beer, let it sit in bottles unrefrigerated for 4 weeks. Here's the problem...The beer was waaaaaay overcarbonated!!
Loud hiss when I opened the first one, no spillover, but when I poured it in a glass (tilted, slow pour) it was 95% head. I kept waiting for beer to settle, poured more, etc, til it was less head and more beer. The taste of the beer I was actually pleased with.

So what happened? I've read I either bottled too early or added too much sugar. But I actually waited 3 weeks to bottle, and I used the prepackaged amount of sugar that came with my Williams brewing kit. The batch made exactly 48 12oz bottles.

Only thing I can think of was that around the time of bottling day we were having a heat wave here in Southern California. Temps in the 80's and 90's, No AC in my apartment. Could this have caused the yeast to reactivate?

Any suggestions for next time?

Thanks everyone for helping me get started!

If the beer was done fermenting, and you used the correct amount of sugar, then you shouldn't have these foaming issues. If you had exactly 48 12 ounce bottles, though, you're low on volume. Only 1/2 gallon, but that might make much difference. I guess I have to wonder how much sugar was in the "prepackaged" priming sugar kit. 5 ounces is typical.

I'd suggest putting the bottles somewhere cold, like a fridge, for a few days before opening the next one. Sometimes that helps the beer absorb the co2 out of the headspace, and reduces foaming.

 

[COLObrewer]

. . . . . . Only thing I can think of was that around the time of bottling day we were having a heat wave here in Southern California. Temps in the 80's and 90's, No AC in my apartment. Could this have caused the yeast to reactivate? . . . .

No, if you were at terminal gravity, nothing will "restart" the yeast unless you added more fermentables which is what you do when priming.

How long did you refrigerate the bottles before opening? you should probably refrigerate for 3 days at least, a week is better.

 

[markiemark]

The first bottle I opened was only refrigerated for a couple hours. But since then I've had the beers in the fridge for a couple weeks now, and they all have the same problem. Some beers have slightly less foam than others, some actually spill over with foam right when I uncap them!
I believe the prepackaged priming sugar is about 4.5 oz

 

[jfr1111]

Hmmmm... First, the beer probably hadn't finished fermenting. Next time, carefuly measure the weight of your priming sugar against the REAL volume you have in your bottling vessel. If you take the volume in your fermenter into your calculations, you don't account for trub loss and may end up overcarbed if you left a lot of beer behind. 5 gal doesn't need the same amount of suagr as 5.5...

 

[COLObrewer]

What was your process when adding the priming sugar? You said that some are more corbonated than others, you may have had a "mixing" problem depending on your process.