Newbie first batch question re primary

[MikeyPipes86]

Brewed my first batch Late Thursday night - a Brewers Best American Amber extract kit (partial).

Followed steeping and boiling to a T...cooled in ice bath for 30 min then poured into primary bucket (through a fine strainer to catch trub) to aerate.

I noticed I had boiled off a good amount so I needed to add a little more water to get near 5 gallons. My OG reading was a little low (1.042 when target is 1.050).

I pitched dry yeast and stirred it in, shut the lid, Added airlock and put it a dark corner of my basement. Temp between 66-68F.

It's now been about 60 hours since pitching and I haven't had any bubbling. As a rookie I'm paranoid so this morning I quickly peeked under the lid and noticed that there was minimal krausen, a bunch of sediment stuck to the walls right above the liquid line and some tannish-green specs on the surface.

Any ideas? Am I jumping the gun, need to repitch, contaminated somehow...?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[ColoHox]

Looks fine. Buckets are notoriously hard to fully seal, so if you are going to open it up anyway to look, take a gravity reading and have a taste.

If gravity is dropping and it doesn't taste/smell of any funk, cap it back up and wait.

 

[unionrdr]

Just yeast & krausen leftovers. Initial fermentation must've been quick.

 

[aiptasia]

The telltale sign is the ring around the brew bucket. You can see where the krausen frothed up to about 1" over the surface or so inside your bucket during the peak. This is fine. Just let the beer sit and ferment out for a good 2-3 weeks in the primary. Even after the gravity readings are the same for a few days, let the beer sit for a diacetyl rest to consume any fusel alcohols the yeasts produced early on in fermentation. It's a way of letting the yeasts clean up after themselves. This was the hardest step to learn as a newbie, that good beers require patience.

 

[downtown3641]

Everything looks great. A few things to keep in mind:

1) Airlock activity, or lack thereof, is not a definitive sign of fermentation. The krausen ring is a good ijndicatoer that fermentation occurred. Gravity readings over several days is the only way to know if it is still occurring or has finished.
2) OG is difficult to measure with partial-boil extract batches. It's near impossible to completely mix your wort and top-off water thoroughly, so your OG will almost always be low. However, if all of your fermentables (your extract) made it into the pot and your volume into the fermenter is correct, your OG will be exactly what it's supposed to be.

 

[unionrdr]

It's not that hard to mix them,but it does take more than a couple stirs. I pour my chilled wort & top off water through a fine mesh strainer into the FV in a circular motion. Looks like rain coming out of the strainer. Aerates to a couple inches of foam & gets out some grainy leftovers.
Yesterday afternoon,I was doing this & got a 1/2" thick medium brown cake in the strainer after I let it drip out. It was a pm wort.
Looked like a gingerbread cookie,lolz. Anyway,I then stir roughly for 5 minutes straight to mix them more. I get good OG readings doing this.
All this & I still got 1L of cold break & trub at the bottom of the FV while I waited for the rehydrate water to cool down to 100F.

 

[MikeyPipes86]

Really appreciate the feedback, guys. I feel better already.

I'm going to bypass secondary fermentation and leave in primary til around Xmas.

 

[FATC1TY]

I agree. Looks like it fermented out fast...

If your OG was close to 40 points, thats not high at all, so it wouldn't have taken much time at all for it to ferment out. If you did mostly extract, you probably got your gravity right, but didn't mix the water all that well when you took a reading.

Leave it for another week and I think you'd be pretty good to bottle it up.

 

[ncbrewer]

Followed steeping and boiling to a T...cooled in ice bath for 30 min then poured into primary bucket (through a fine strainer to catch trub) to aerate.

I hope you checked the wort temperature - cooling for 30 minutes doesn't necessarily get it to pitching temperature.

 

[FATC1TY]

I hope you checked the wort temperature - cooling for 30 minutes doesn't necessarily get it to pitching temperature.

You are right, chances are, if thats the results 60 hours from pitching, it was hotter than it should have been and was really fast to ferment.

 

[JuiceyJay]

Really appreciate the feedback, guys. I feel better already.

I'm going to bypass secondary fermentation and leave in primary til around Xmas.

That is for the best since it is your first beer, don't risk anything happening to your beer (infection, oxidizing, ect ect) also most beers don't need a secondary.

 

[MikeyPipes86]

I will double check wort temp on subsequent batches.

Does a rapid ferment have any negative side effects or result in a different tasting beer than if it was a more deliberate longer ferment with sustained krausen?

 

[unionrdr]

A quick ferment is fine with proper yeast pitch & good temps. It's when it goes fast from temps being too high that's bad flavor-wise.

 

[FATC1TY]

I will double check wort temp on subsequent batches.

Does a rapid ferment have any negative side effects or result in a different tasting beer than if it was a more deliberate longer ferment with sustained krausen?

No, sometimes it's a quick fermentation if the gravity isn't that high, and you pitch the proper amount of yeast and have it at a low and steady temp within the range of the style of yeast used.

If you had the temperature high, then you will have some off flavors that aren't intended to be in the beer in some cases.