Messages

1

Equipment and Software / Rolling boil gathers no moss...?

« on: December 16, 2012, 12:15:25 AM »

Hello All,
I recently moved apartments and my gas stove in my new apartment is strangely weaker than the electric burner I was using in my old apartment. I am an extract brewer and have been fairly pleased with my results, I try as much as possible to do full volume (6 gallons starting for a 5 gallon recipe) boils. While my new stove is quite weak it does eventually get the wort to 100 C. However there is not that much motion on the surface and I definitely would not say the boil is "rolling." Is this a problem? Is there a benefit to having a vigorous boil or is the fact that the wort is 100 degrees sufficient? Also if it helps, I am getting a decent hot break.
Thanks!

2

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 07:48:11 PM »

Hey, you guys were totally right. I just got back from a business trip, "2nd Krausen" was still as it had been but the air lock had almost stopped bubbling. I took a gravity reading of 1.015, transfered it to secondary, thiefed a little bit and it tastes pretty great for this point in the process.

Just for my future knowlege:
a. Is it a problem if the CO2 falls out of suspension (such as mine did)?

b. I'm not sure I trust my stick-on liquid crystal thermometer to accurately tell me what's happening Inside the carboy. Is there a better temperature monitor that I could use inside the frige I converted for brewing and am using a digital thermostate to control?

Thanks for all the help and sorry for the "newbie" questions, your advice has been super helpful!

3

Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 02:30:22 PM »

The temperature has been between 65 and 67 F the entire time. Would the primary phase of fermentation be done that quickly? The second krausen didn't actually have the airlock bubbling too much...

4

Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 29, 2012, 05:26:03 AM »

Of course, I hadn't thought of that! This also happened to be the first beer I have ever done with a late addition of corn sugar to bump up the gravity. That would make a lot of sense that they would burn through the simple sugars first. Thanks for your help!

5

Yeast and Fermentation / Two Different Krausens / peaks of activity?

« on: October 28, 2012, 08:17:59 AM »

Hello All,
This was my first extract batch where I used a yeast starter, making a Black IPA. I did the calculations to create as appropriate a starter as I could for this 1.075 beer, used a stir plate for 20 hours, put it in the fridge for a day, made the wort exactly as I had my previous beer which have been turning out quite well, decanted the starter, and poured it in. If anything the OG was a bit under the target, more like 1.071.

I saw a very healthy krausen kick up within about 8 hours of the fermentation, it was bubbling away furiously and then about 2 days later started to fall back down. I was a little disappointed that the fermentation was done so quick, thought that was a bad sign. Then about 12 hours later a "cleaner looking" krausen started to rise. I'm almost 4 days into the fermentation now and this newer Krausen is even taller than the first one I saw. I am pretty meticulous about sanitization and cleaning, and cant think of anything that I did differently in this batch aside from the yeast starter that would have infected it. Any ideas on what might be going on?