Hi i am doing my first home brew. after less than 24 hours the beer was coming through the water in the air lock. i looked online and it said to change the airlock and put it back on i did this several times. I did this for the last time some nearly 24 hour ago and now there are no bubbles in the airlock. I am waiting for my sg tool to come so i can check the sg of the beer but it doesn't arrive until another week. Any suggestions? Would highly appreciate it
2 Answers
If you were getting beer/yeast coming out of your airlock, it seems safe to say your beer was fermenting, perhaps quite vigorously. It's not uncommon for a beer to ferment completely within a few days, so that signs of active fermentation will almost completely disappear. This may be what has happened. Or it could be that in replacing the airlock, you maybe didn't get a good seal and the carbon dioxide is escaping through a bad seal instead of through the airlock.
I don't think you have much to worry about here. Wait for your new tool to arrive, and once you can check your gravity, take two different readings a few days apart. Assuming the readings are close to what you expect and there is no change between the two readings, you are likely good to go ahead and bottle!
What temperature is your fermenter. You may want to consider cooling it down if it is too high. That will slow fermentation and potentially produce better tasting beer if your temp is too high. Keep in mind that fermentation creates heat, so the fermenter will have a higher than room temperature.
As far as no bubbles go, make sure that everything is snug because the CO2 may be escaping around the airlock as opposed to passing thru it.
