Fermentation Notes, Brown Ale

Day 1 (wed 26dec):

Specs:

Initial Specific Gravity: 1.041 (target was 1.044)

Day 1:

1 - Signs of fermentation (foam in drum tap) were present after 12 hours. I think the longer lag, despite pitching onto yeast cake, were due to the fact that the temperature upon adding and mixing the wort was ~ 56F. So I overcooled a little bit and it took a few hours for the temp to get back up into the 60s. I wasn't really worried about it because this yeast is supposed to tolerate down to 54F and its optimum range is listed at 57F-70F. Oh well, better to overcool than undercool and potentially kill your yeast. We'll see if things pick up as it remains around 64-65 F.

Day 3:

Continuing to ferment (I can hear it fizzing and churning when I put my ear up to it). With this brew, like my first one, the airlock isn't showing activity, either due to a less powerful ferment than the last one or that the fermentor lid didn't seal tight enough (at this point, i don't really even look to the airlock, I just check to see foam formed in the drum tap and a foamy krausen visible through the airlock hole). I can see a positive pressure in it due to the slight miniscus of the vodka in the down direction and no miniscus in the up/out direction side of the airlock. I have kept the ambient temp of the room around 65F (best I can do without freezing my brother at night, although given the way he hibernates, it probably would have little affect on him), and the fermometer is reading 68F, so a little heat it being generated, still acceptable temperatures. I suspect it will come down back to room ambient temperature when primary fermentation has ceased.

I will probably wait a week or so before taking a hydrometer reading as everything seems to be going just fine.

Day 10 (Sat 06jan):

Took hydrometer reading:

Specific gravity: 1.013, beer tasted pretty good, with some natural carbonation still in solution.

This is about 68% attenuation, maybe it has a little more to go. Regardless, I will probably bottle it up monday night (12 days) out of convenience (i'm off) and because with the large amount of yeast pitched, it probably hit its final gravity some days ago and hopefully the extra yeast population has had plenty of time to clean up after themselves. If not, oh well, they can do it in bottles (bumper sticker).

Additionally, there appears to be a ton of trub/yeast on the bottom as the drum tap is about half full of it, so that probably means like 2-3 layer on the bottom. I'm betting this is due to repitching and the large number of yeast involved, especially if they multiplied even more as expected, horny little bastards (for themselves, which is somewhat kinky).