Hello
New at homebrewing. But I love it.
I wanted to start out with extract brewing, to learn a bit about the process, before moving on to partial mash.
I started out with a pack of Muntons Gold IPA. (the one with 2 cans of extract)
After doing the primary for 7 days, I moved to two smaller secondaries.
The primary fermentor was 30 liters. And the batch size was 23 liters.
The two smaller secondary fermentors were 10 liters each. And i left less than 2 inches of headspace. and sealed them with an airlock. And put them side by side in a 65 degrees room.
However, they are acting differently. One of them is bubbling two bubbles a minute. While the other one shows no activity at all.
I was worried that the one that showed no activity, would have no yeast to make the carbonation during the bottle conditioning. So I added half a cup of sugar, mixed with boiling water and then cooled, to the "dead" secondary.
After 20 hours, it shows no activity.
So my noob questions are :
1. Is one of the secondaries dead, and ready for the drain ?
2. Is it a no-no to split the batch into two secondaries ? ( i did it because I had no bigger secondary)
3. How is this possible ? My theories are a) I overdid the iodophor sanitation on one of the secondary fermentors and killed all the yeast. b) I used a syphon, and all the active yeast was in either the upper or lower part of the primary fermentor. c) It's the sorcery of the beer elves who put an hex on my brew
Unfortunatly, I don't have an Hydrometer yet. So i can't do gravity readings. (I have to get abroad to get one, but will do so in two weeks). I was very thorough with the cleaning and sanitation, so I'm sure that it's not because of bad hygiene ( used dishwasher, then an oxi cleaner, and then iodophor on the smaller buckets, and rinsed them with water in between)
Hope you got some good answers and adivices :rockin:
New at homebrewing. But I love it.
I wanted to start out with extract brewing, to learn a bit about the process, before moving on to partial mash.
I started out with a pack of Muntons Gold IPA. (the one with 2 cans of extract)
After doing the primary for 7 days, I moved to two smaller secondaries.
The primary fermentor was 30 liters. And the batch size was 23 liters.
The two smaller secondary fermentors were 10 liters each. And i left less than 2 inches of headspace. and sealed them with an airlock. And put them side by side in a 65 degrees room.
However, they are acting differently. One of them is bubbling two bubbles a minute. While the other one shows no activity at all.
I was worried that the one that showed no activity, would have no yeast to make the carbonation during the bottle conditioning. So I added half a cup of sugar, mixed with boiling water and then cooled, to the "dead" secondary.
After 20 hours, it shows no activity.
So my noob questions are :
1. Is one of the secondaries dead, and ready for the drain ?
2. Is it a no-no to split the batch into two secondaries ? ( i did it because I had no bigger secondary)
3. How is this possible ? My theories are a) I overdid the iodophor sanitation on one of the secondary fermentors and killed all the yeast. b) I used a syphon, and all the active yeast was in either the upper or lower part of the primary fermentor. c) It's the sorcery of the beer elves who put an hex on my brew
Unfortunatly, I don't have an Hydrometer yet. So i can't do gravity readings. (I have to get abroad to get one, but will do so in two weeks). I was very thorough with the cleaning and sanitation, so I'm sure that it's not because of bad hygiene ( used dishwasher, then an oxi cleaner, and then iodophor on the smaller buckets, and rinsed them with water in between)
Hope you got some good answers and adivices :rockin: