coffee pot ale, part 3

As of Friday morning all of the hops have descended and there's just a slight bubbling at the surface. If there was much krausen it was all concealed by the volume of hop fragments.

The wine cork and tube device is not airtight. It works as long as there is very little backpressure. In the future it would be better to stick to rubber bungs made for this.

I suspect that this wort is not one that will support really good fermentation. Based on the very low extract efficiency and the significant quantity of refined sugar adjunct there may not be enough free amino nitrogen or other nutrients for healthy yeast to grow. I don't know whether the vigorous primary fermentation refutes this theory, or whether failure may not be evident until later. Too much refined sugar can prevent the yeast from secreting enzymes for maltose fermentation, so perhaps the fermentation will get stuck after consuming all the sucrose. I guess the evidence of that will be a high final gravity and some sweetness. Well, this whole experiment is not producing anything very beer-like, I'm sure. It's more like a slightly alcoholic malt soda or something.