Rise in heat as a gauge for fermentation activity?

[billman]

Ok. I think something is wrong. I am doing the Bee Cave Brewery Kölsch recipe.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/bee-cave-brewery-koelsch-33548/

I had previously posted about not having airlock activity and was told to ignore it. Understandable.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/what-norm-airlock-activity-234848/#post2770333

I am fermenting in a bucket in my bathroom. The fermenter bucket is sitting in a water filled beverage tub. The ambient air Temp is always around 70-72F. The water in the beverage tub is at 68F without any ice.

I am using white labs WLP029 Kolsch yeast. I did not do a starter. I oxygenated by stirring for 1min. I pitched last Sunday and got fermentation on Tues. At first I did not add water to the beverage tub. When I pitched the yeast, the wort was at 69.2F. After Fermentation the temp went up to like 72F. At that point I put water in the tub and a frozen water bottle. I brought the temp down to 68F. Which is my target ferment temp.

I noticed the next day that the temp was the same as well as no real activity in the airlock. Strange because I had previously did the Fizzy Yellow Beer with great results. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/fizzy-yellow-beer-120939/
That brew I had to constantly keep putting frozen water bottles in the water to keep the temp in the fermenter bucket down.

Here I am a week later and the temp in the fermenter bucket never went up after the first cooling down. Now, it has gone down even more in temp. to like 66F. This says to me that there is no real activity in the fermenter bucket.

Should I try to bring the fermenter bucket up to like 70F and try to rouse the yeast?

 

[mrk305]

You might have just missed it. Sometimes they bubble for days and sometimes it is over in twelve hours. Take the lid off and look at it. If you see a bunch of krausen on the side of the bucket it is probably done.

Did you take a gravity reading at the beginning?

 

[billman]

yeah, OG was 1046... I'm not really that concerned with bubbling in the airlock as much as temp in fermenter bucket. So, it could totally ferment out in like a day?

I just don't want to take a bunch of hydrometer samples and use up what I got in there.

 

[mrk305]

Taking a gravity reading today will probably ease your mind. If I remember correctly, that recipe called for Nottingham yeast. I almost alway use Nottingham and I keep my house at 66 in the winter. Sometimes the bubbling takes off immediatly and sometimes it stars slow and goes for a few days.

 

[billman]

The recipe I linked says WLP029 with starter. I should of done the starter! But I only had enough to do the recipe. The beer store is long ways away from me to just run out and get more stuff.

I agree with you about a yeast packet. It has more yeast and really no need to make a starter. If I had thought about it before hand, I would have used that over white labs.

 

[mrk305]

Well,it has been a week. If you don't want to take a gravity reading, like i said, just pop the top and see if there is a krauson ring in your bucket. Chances are it just finished really quick. In any case, it still needs to condition another couple of weeks or three.

 

[billman]

I'll take a reading tomorrow. I was just surprised because the heat and activity started and dropped in 1 day not a week.

Sunday I pitched it, no rise in temp or activity until Tuesday was fermenting, the next day Wed. everything stopped all the way up to today.