Freaking out over 1st time

Don't rely on the airlock to tell you anything. Check gravity and when it doesn't change for 2 or 3 consecutive days, it is done.

 

What kind of kit was it? What temperature was it fermenting at? How many gallons was it? All these things matter. Going off "the usual", it's likely close to done with the vigorous part of fermentation (note that it's not "done" by a long shot, just with the vigorous part), but without details it's hard to say for certain.

All in all, relax and leave it alone. Yeast normally work just fine without human interference.

 

ha, i came on here for this exact reason. not to thread jack, but i brewed my fist batch last night, and have some concerns:

sierra clone - 3.3 lbs liquid malt, .5 lb carapils, 1 lb 60-L, 1 lb 2-row, .5 oz chinook, 1 oz aurora, 1 oz cascade.

fast fwd: took forever for the wort to chill. got fed up and pitched at around 92* with yeast primed with 4 oz of 90 degree water that sat for 15 min (per instructions on yeast). finally got the temp to around 70 in the fermenter a few hours ago (sat >70 for <24 hrs). air lock was going nuts until i got the temp under control a little while ago.

what can i expect? i sanitized hard prior to the brew, and kept things relatively clean while brewing. went so far as to sanitize the rim on the fermenter again prior to putting the lid on.

thanks for any input, and i'm sure i could've researched the archives a bit, but i figured i'd add my $0.02 since this thread was already started.

 

You can probably expect some fusel alcohols due to the high temps. Hard to say how bad it might be until it's done though.

 

Leave it at least two weeks. Then check your gravity with a hydrometer. Check it again 2-3 days after that. If it hasn't moved and is in the area of what you expected, attenuation is done. If so, you can bottle (if it tastes good with no off-flavors) or give it a few more days for the yeast to finish cleaning up their byproducts. If in doubt, I'd recommend erring on the side of not rushing to bottle. 3-4 weeks in the fermenter would not be too long.

 

thanks for the input man.

 

http://www.howtobrew.com/

 

It'll probably have a fair bit of off flavors, and fusel's.

You are lucky the yeast took off, those temps are enough to shock it to death and cause nothing to happen in some cases. You want your temps to be atleast close to 70 before you pitch, even if that means covering, cooling, or letting it sit a few hours sealed up before you pitch.

Read up on Palmers "How to Brew".

 

78-82 is quite warm. You'll want to look into ways to keep that lower for future batches, like the old "t-shirt, fan, and bucket" method. Too late to worry about this one, anyway.

Being that warm, two days vigorous activity and now it's slacking off, well, that isn't at all surprising. Yeast tear through wort at ale temps anyway (yes, there are exceptions), and that's warmer still, so it sounds normal. Too warm, but normal. As stated, just leave it be, check it in a couple weeks, and it should be good. And seriously, unless you leave it wide open and shake a dirty rag into it or sneeze into it, you don't have to be overly paranoid about cracking it open to check gravity. Just sanitize anything that comes into contact with the wort, and you'll be fine. We were making beer long before we knew what bacteria was, and while you certainly can infect your beer, it isn't as easy as looking at it.

 

For future reference, you might want to take gravity readings before you pitch your yeast, and record it with your recipe to reference it. With extract, if you hit your volumes right, chances are it's pretty close anyways in OG. Popping it open is nerve racking at first, but beer is actually pretty resilient. You can open it, pull a sample with a sanitized wine thief, or baster. Put it in your hydro test tube, and check it when you think it's getting close to being done. Check it 3 days later and record it against what you go. If no change, you can proceed, or let it sit, you decide.

4-6 weeks is plenty of time, almost over board, unless it's a super high gravity stout, which your recipe isn't. It should be done easy in 2 weeks fermenting, let it sit in secondary for 2, or leave it in primary if you wish. Bottle it, and give it atleast 3 weeks before you try it.

Also, you'll want to ferment at a lower temp than the ambient temp in your home. 78-82 is HOT. With heat like that, and a vigorous fermentation, you will get some nasty off flavors, and fusel alcohols. Even if it's 74 in your home, the beer is going to have heat generated from the fermentation, so it's not unusual for it to be even hotter than ambient air temp. Look into getting a fridge to keep it in the 60's, or look at getting a large bucket that you can make a swamp cooler with. It's simple as getting a plastic tub, put your fermentation bucket/carboy in there, fill with cold water and add ice, or frozen bottles of water. Monitor the temp, keep the water around 60-65, atleast for the first few days of fermentation. One of the biggest differences in a good homebrew, and a bad ones, isn't really the recipe in most cases, or you doing everything perfect for the boil.. It's controlling the temperature.