- Joined
- Dec 23, 2014
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- 32
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- 5
So, I've only brewed about 10 times, but I've never seen a fermentation like this.
I brewed a 5 gal. Blind Pig clone from a Northern Brewer kit on Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, it had blown the top off the airlock and krausen-ed all over the place. I replaced it with a blowoff tube and let it carry on. Yesterday it appeared it was starting to slow a bit and the krausen level dropped, so I thought about putting the airlock back on. Glad I didn't - it's now Thursday morning, and it's STILL giving the blowoff tube a workout, and the StarSan bucket is still bubbling away. (See pic below.)
How'd I get here? Well, my dime-store analysis of my other crappy beers has usually pointed to under attenuation, for various reasons. This time, I went to the extreme and pitched two yeast packets (White Labs California WLP001) instead of one to see what would happen. Not only that, I bought a stir plate and made a starter out of it to boot. I was not gonna let under attenuation be a problem this time! (I know about the pitch rate calculator, but I haven't gotten that far in my beer-making journey to really investigate how that all works yet.)
For what it's worth, the temp had run a little hot in the first few days - around the 73-degree mark - though it's now fallen closer to the more appropriate 68 by yesterday. I don't currently have a great way to cool during fermentation (will be fixing that with a forthcoming Father's Day present), so I just put it on my basement floor.
Any thoughts on how this is all gonna turn out? Is this fermentation unusual? Or is this normal and I just haven't experienced what a good fermentation looks like before? Was the double yeast pitch + starter an overcorrection that will ruin the batch? Regardless, I'm enjoying the show, but I'm just not sure what I've done here, so curious what the opinions are.
I brewed a 5 gal. Blind Pig clone from a Northern Brewer kit on Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, it had blown the top off the airlock and krausen-ed all over the place. I replaced it with a blowoff tube and let it carry on. Yesterday it appeared it was starting to slow a bit and the krausen level dropped, so I thought about putting the airlock back on. Glad I didn't - it's now Thursday morning, and it's STILL giving the blowoff tube a workout, and the StarSan bucket is still bubbling away. (See pic below.)
How'd I get here? Well, my dime-store analysis of my other crappy beers has usually pointed to under attenuation, for various reasons. This time, I went to the extreme and pitched two yeast packets (White Labs California WLP001) instead of one to see what would happen. Not only that, I bought a stir plate and made a starter out of it to boot. I was not gonna let under attenuation be a problem this time! (I know about the pitch rate calculator, but I haven't gotten that far in my beer-making journey to really investigate how that all works yet.)
For what it's worth, the temp had run a little hot in the first few days - around the 73-degree mark - though it's now fallen closer to the more appropriate 68 by yesterday. I don't currently have a great way to cool during fermentation (will be fixing that with a forthcoming Father's Day present), so I just put it on my basement floor.
Any thoughts on how this is all gonna turn out? Is this fermentation unusual? Or is this normal and I just haven't experienced what a good fermentation looks like before? Was the double yeast pitch + starter an overcorrection that will ruin the batch? Regardless, I'm enjoying the show, but I'm just not sure what I've done here, so curious what the opinions are.