bdaddy
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- Mar 13, 2009
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Was brewing an Irish Red Ale from midwest (LME), using 3 gallon boil in 22 quart SS pot on my gas stove.
My stove really struggled getting to a boil (took forever), and when it did it wasn't what I see as a "rolling boil", rather just a slight boil. Mostly small ripples, although occasionally the center would boil pretty rough and pop high so I had to turn it down occasionally to keep from splashing out of the pot, but the whole pot never really came to a rolling boil nor was there a huge foam rush (mild foam at the beginning that dissolved).
Once the bubbles came I added the hops and let it go for an hour, but it was a very small boil for that time....my question is..what's likely to be the outcome with a mild boil? Reason I ask is it's going on 24 hours now and still no action in my airlock, so wondering if this has anything to do with it? (I used safale-04 dry yeast, re-hydrated about 30 minutes before pitching...aerated to wort by dumping between fermenter and another bucket about 4 times).
Had a lot of glitches as it was my first batch..main issue being my thermometer was not up to the task (too slow to measure and apparently not too accurate), so I was really having a hard time judging the temp for cooling as well as the hydration of the yeast. I thought I had cooled my wort to <80 but when I added it to the fermenter (which had 3 gallons of pre-boil water) the LCD therm on it read 82 degrees. I pitched anyways, so maybe that's an issue as well. My hydrometer reading before yeast pitch was 1.038 (at what I guess was that 82 degrees if the LCD therm. was correct).
It's been a "son of fermentation chiller" since the pitch at around 68 degrees for the chiller (although the fermenter said 72 at one point when I checked).
Wondering what I should do at this stage. Leave be for 48 more hours to see if fermentation starts? Repitch another safale-04? Toss the whole thing and try with a new batch on a more powerful outside burner?
My stove really struggled getting to a boil (took forever), and when it did it wasn't what I see as a "rolling boil", rather just a slight boil. Mostly small ripples, although occasionally the center would boil pretty rough and pop high so I had to turn it down occasionally to keep from splashing out of the pot, but the whole pot never really came to a rolling boil nor was there a huge foam rush (mild foam at the beginning that dissolved).
Once the bubbles came I added the hops and let it go for an hour, but it was a very small boil for that time....my question is..what's likely to be the outcome with a mild boil? Reason I ask is it's going on 24 hours now and still no action in my airlock, so wondering if this has anything to do with it? (I used safale-04 dry yeast, re-hydrated about 30 minutes before pitching...aerated to wort by dumping between fermenter and another bucket about 4 times).
Had a lot of glitches as it was my first batch..main issue being my thermometer was not up to the task (too slow to measure and apparently not too accurate), so I was really having a hard time judging the temp for cooling as well as the hydration of the yeast. I thought I had cooled my wort to <80 but when I added it to the fermenter (which had 3 gallons of pre-boil water) the LCD therm on it read 82 degrees. I pitched anyways, so maybe that's an issue as well. My hydrometer reading before yeast pitch was 1.038 (at what I guess was that 82 degrees if the LCD therm. was correct).
It's been a "son of fermentation chiller" since the pitch at around 68 degrees for the chiller (although the fermenter said 72 at one point when I checked).
Wondering what I should do at this stage. Leave be for 48 more hours to see if fermentation starts? Repitch another safale-04? Toss the whole thing and try with a new batch on a more powerful outside burner?