light and fermentation

[Homebrew-Micheal]

I started a cider recently using wine yeast pitched to no name apple juice. everything's going fine, I had about a half inch layer of foam at the top of my glass carboy for the first couple of days and it's died down since then. Today I turned the flashlight on my cell phone on and shined it into the carboy to see what I could see. Not much to be honest, but what I did notice was that a LOT of foam rose up from the must almost immediately after I put the light on it. At first I thought it must be from something else, but after a few more tests, I concluded that it was in fact the light causing the foam to rise from the fermenting must. My best theory is that some wavelength of light from my cell phone light is stimulating the yeast somehow, but I don't quite know how. Does anyone have a good explanation for this phenomenon?/

 

[bernardsmith]

Coincidence? To the best of my knowledge yeast are unaffected by "light" at any wavelength though clearly light is one expression of energy and yeast are certainly affected by heat which is another expression. But what tests did you perform to determine that it was the light that was indeed stimulating the production of bubbles and not say your movement or electromagnetic signals sent by your phone

 

[MindenMan]

Is it possible you moved the fermenters even a very slight amount? If there was movement of the fwermenters, the CO2 was being released from the trub taking the yeast with it.