Thursday, March 26, 2009

fourth brew (Belgian witbier), part 5

Well, this witbier has been educational from the get-go. Tonight, as we were watching the pounding of Duke and Memphis, Isaac off-handedly mentioned that my beer sure was a mess. Err...can you be more specific, son? Brown goo all over. Yay. And apparently it was like that this morning.

Last night after checking the gravity I rocked the fermenter several times to see whether that would knock down the krausen and to perhaps get some of the yeast off the walls. Some time during the night it apparently got very, very busy again, but this time I had an airlock on it instead of the blowoff tube. Big mistake. There was a primordial pond of thick, rich, and stinky glop on the lid. I threw away the airlock after mopping up the mess and installing a new one.

So this is twice with this beer that there hasn't been any noticeable CO2 production, I have agitated the wort, and that night it goes berserk. I wonder if this is a trait of the Wyeast 3944. The airlock is bubbling politely now, once every several seconds.

Update: The next morning it's still bubbling every 8 seconds.

Update: Every 10 to 11 seconds in the evening.

Update: Same pace after another 24 hours! I'd say that this qualified as a stalled fermentation.

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