Nothing Happens At Ten

Re: “still nothing going on in Dad’s Beer Bucket except for one drowned gnat.” from the April 11 post on my previous batch. Well this time, there are two drowned gnats, and I have a better camera, so you can actually see them.

See those two little specks? Those are the gnats. Really. Look closer. Here’s a closeup.

Yep. Gonzo. Ick.

You can bet that the gnats were not drawn to their demise by the Happy Bubbles, because there were no Happy Bubbles. I still have not figured out where all that CO₂ went, because the fermentation went fine. The beer tastes OK (for green beer), and the specific gravity came out 1.010, which means that the fermentation went to completion.

Also, there is a ton of yeast in the bottom of the bucket. I poured the yeast into a 1 quart half-and-half container to see how much of it there is.

Here is the vial of yeast that I started with.

The vial contained 35 milliliters of yeast when I started. That is 1.183491ounces. Here is how much yeast was left in the bucket.

That is almost a quart of yeast. So we went from 1.183491ounces to about 30 ounces, which is a multiplier of 25.3487352249. Happy yeast. Good fermentation. No CO₂. Puzzlement.

OK. That is my yukkie post of the month. I will try to clean it up next time.

The bottom line is that the beer is in the secondary fermentation vessel. I will bottle it next weekend.

I put up a new beer yesterday to ferment using my revised Big Hose airlock.

There it is, all cozy in its blankies.

Unfortunately, a day later there are still no happy bubbles.

Nuthin’. Nada. Zip. Nichts. It is just sitting there.

However, once again the room smells like beer, and if we peek under the covers we find…..

Yikes! This time, it is 80 degrees in there! Something is foaming in that bucket, but the CO₂ is going somewhere else. When I did this with that little hose in it, the bucket very nearly burst. Now, I can’t get a peep out of it. I wonder where all that gas is going?

(No, not into this blog)

Well as long as the beer turns out OK, I will let it go for now and think about it over the Summer. I won’t be brewing again until next Fall. Next week I will rack it off into the secondary.

Stay tuned.

Edit:
Late breaking news. I shined a flashlight down into the hole that the Big Hose goes into, and I could see bubbles in the beer. So there are bubbles, just not on the outside of the bucket.

Yay.

I wonder where all that gas is going.

I am brewing again this weekend. Since there was an issue last time with the friendly bubbles not showing up (I really missed those bubbles), I decided that I would do some upgrades to my attachment for the Big Hose. I took the bucket lid all apart and added some parts. Here are all the parts for Rev 2.

You will notice that one addition is a stainless steel bolt, a nut, and some washers. Here they are.

All of those parts are stainless steel so they won’t rust. I am going to plug the little blow hole in the lid using that machine bolt so that I will know beyond all doubt that it will not come out of the hole. Sometimes we have to hit Murphy back with some Heavy Hardware.

How sure am I that this one will stay put? Here are some calculations.

The tensile strength of a stainless steel bolt is about 100,000 pounds per square inch. I got that from the internet, so it must be correct. =:O

The area of the 3/8″ bolt is π * R², where π = 3.14159265359.

The diameter D = 3/8″ = .375″ so the radius R = D/2 = 0.1875″

R² = 0.03515625

R² * π = 0.110446616728

The cross section of the bolt contains about 0.110446616728 square inches.

So the tensile strength of the 3/8″ stainless steel bolt is:

0.110446616728 in² * 100,000 pounds = 11,044.6616728 pounds

OK fine.

So how much does a batch of beer weigh?

At 70° F (which coincidentally is the temperature at which I pitch the yeast) the density of water is 0.9979955 g/mL.

We can convert this to lb/gal as follows:

0.9979955 g/mL is 997.9955 g/L (multiply by 1,000 duh).

There are 3.785411784 L/gallon, so that is 3,777.82392608 g/gallon.

There are 453.59237 grams in each pound, so divide by that number and you get
8.3286760888 pounds per gallon.

Whew!

Almost done.

OK. A gallon of water weighs about 8.328676 pounds.. so the 5 gallon brew is 5 times that weight, or about 41.64338 pounds.

But, beer wort is heavier than water because of all the sugar in it.

The beer specific gravity (the ratio between the weight of the wort and the weight of the water) is about 1.063, so the batch of beer will weigh 41.64338 times 1.063 = 44.26691294 pounds.

Also, the beer has to be kept in something, right? The bucket weighs 3 pounds 12 Oz. (I weighed it on the kitchen scale… don’t tell). That is 3.75 pounds.

Add that to the weight of the wort you get 48.01691294 pounds for the whole rig.

So, the bolt would theoretically be capable of holding up

11,044.6616728 / 48.01691294 = 230.01607135 batches of beer.

I think maybe the top of the bucket will blow off before the bolt fails, so we are good to go.

I am so glad you asked.

Here is a photo of the outside end of the bolt, in place.

I put the head of the bolt on the inside.

Looks pretty professional.

The next problem that I saw was that there was leakage around the hose fixture. So I got out a second O ring,

I put one around the threads of the hose barb before screwing it into the lid.

I put the barb through the hole, and put the other ring over the threads.

I secured it with my plastic nut, and we are double sealed.

Done!

We are ready to rock and roll tomorrow. This time, it’s gonna work! Happy beer bubbles!

As I prognosticated in my previous blog, I did tap some beer out of the bucket on Saturday to taste it.

It looks nice. It smells like beer. It has an off flavor that I do not like, but I could not tell for sure if I was tasting the bitters in the raw beer, or if it was sour. I have difficulty telling the difference when the beer is green. So I put it aside to think about it and decide what to do with it on Sunday.

By this morning I had decided to go ahead and do the secondary fermentation. There really isn’t anything to lose, and it gives me a week to procrastina…… um… to make a more discerning decision. So I pulled out some more beer and measured the specific gravity, which came out to 1.011. Since the beer wort started at 1.063, the finishing gravity of 1.011 indicates a normal fermentation.

I sanitized the carboy and started a siphon into it.

Peering into the bucket, I saw what would appear to be a ring of beer snot that also indicates a normal fermentation.

I turned the lid over to see what I could find there, and it looks like the foam made it all the way up to my plastic nut, but not through it.

If you look at the ring in the previous photo you can see how far the foam had to climb to get up to the nut. That is another indication of a strong fermentation.

By the way, when I was in the beer store, I bought this tool for prying the bucket open.

It only cost about 6 bucks, and it saved my fingers fer sure. If you plan on brewing in a bucket, get one of these. It works great. They told me that restaurants use it to open 5 gallon buckets of stuff that they buy in bulk.

I will have to rethink the idea of eating in restaurants.

Some funny things happen when you are brewing beer. The makers of Star-San® say that you are not to rinse out the foam. They say that the Star-San will foam up, but you are to ignore the foam and not rinse and just put the beer in with the foam.

OK then.

The carboy was full of foam when I started racking the beer, and here is where it went.

As I kept racking, the Foam Worm kept coming.

And kept coming….

LOL. That foam worm was still clinging to the hose when I pulled it out of the carboy and threw it into the sink for washing.

After all of the beer had been racked into the carboy, I looked in the bucket to see how much yeast was in there. The answer – lots.

I don’t know if you can see in the photo, but there is a puddle of the stuff a couple of inches deep in the corner (the bucket is tilted). I have scraped the bottom of the bucket to show that even up there, there is a quarter inch of so of yeast.

Lots of yeast!

So every indication is that this was a normal, strong fermentation and that the reason for no friendly bloops out of the Big Hose was because it blew the plug out of the little hole. So I am going to go ahead with this beer and assume that the off flavor in it is just from the hops and the fact that it is still green beer.

The next time I do this, I will plug that little hole with something more substantial than a wimpy rubber stopper. I am thinking a stainless steel machine bolt might do the trick.

Disaster has struck! I had such high hopes for this beer. I did it by the book, but there were never any bubbles. None! No friendly bloops, or even any silly bblbllblbls. It just sat there and did nothing for a whole day! My yeast starter was bubbling away when I pitched it into the beer. But after I pitched it…. nothing!

I checked on Monday morning as I left for work. Nothing!

I checked again Monday after work, and there was still nothing going on in Dad’s Beer Bucket except for one drowned gnat. Here is a photo:

You can’t see the gnat in the photo, but trust me, it’s there.

You can imagine my disappointment with another stalled fermentation. Has this one gone sour too?

But then, I took a look under the blankets to see if I could see anything in the hose. What I found was that the little plug in the piddly little hole had popped out. Something in that beer bucket pushed the plug out of the hole! And if the hole is open, then it makes sense that there would be no bubbles coming out of the Big Hose. All the gas would come out of the piddly little hole in the top of the bucket.

I can only hope that another gnat didn’t find its way into the beer down that hole and drown in the beer.

Then, I picked up the thermometer to see what the temperature was and saw this:

That says 78 degrees! It is only 67 degrees in the room. Something has been going on inside of that fermenter that took the outside of the beer bucket up to 11 degrees above ambient temperature. That happens if there is a strong fermentation going on…. Fermentation is a mildly exothermic reaction. The beer usually heats up under the blankets, but I don’t think I have ever seen it go up that high.

So, maybe there is hope after all. The temperature measurements indicate that a fermentation happened, bubbles or no bubbles.

It is now Friday as I am blogging this, and the temperature has fallen back down to 67 degrees. That would be consistent with a fermentation that has calmed down after a week.

I wonder……

Tomorrow I will tap some of the beer out and see what it tastes like. I hope it is still good. If it is, I will rack it into a secondary fermenter and move forward. We shall see.

Stay tuned.

Isn’t this exciting?

I have started my Spring brewing again. We are almost out of the Honey Porter, so I need to get cracking if we are going to have beer for the Fall.

If you recall a post made long ago, you will remember that I used to ferment with my Big Hose stuffed into the neck of the glass carboy, like this:

That worked great because the Big Hose was big enough to keep the beer snork from clogging the hose and making a mess.

But, I had to stop using the glass carboy, and there is no place to put the Big Hose into the bucket. I ended up using the little hose, which clogged up immediately and made a mess. Remember this?

Ick.

The top of the bucket bulged up, and Dad’s Beer Bucket was filled with beer snot and other unmentionable substances.

Well, I think I have figured out how to fix the problem with some parts that I found at the local Big Box Home Improvement Store (BBHIS). First, I took the lid from the bucket, which looked like this:

and I cut a 1″ hole right in the middle of it, where that dent is.

Here’s a closeup of my fine workmanship.

Well OK, so it’s a hole anyway.

Next, I took this part from the BBHIS out of its bag.

That is called a “Hose Barb”. The hose goes over the end on the right and the threads on the left screw into something. I think it is called a “Barb” because of the barbs on the end that hold the hose in place.

The hose barb is sized to fit a hose that is 1″ inside diameter….. which….. is just the size of my Big Hose. Fancy that.

The threads on the left side of the hose barb are “3/4″ MIP”. The Associate in the BBHIS could not tell me what that meant, but after some research, I found that the letters MIP stand for “Male Iron Pipe”. So they are some sort of standard thread for screwing together iron pipe…. even though the hose barb is made of nylon… presumably in this case to adapt some ancient iron setup to a more modern nylon hose… or something….. but I digress.

I also found this at the BBHIS.

That has threads on the inside of it which just happen to be 3/4″ FIP. That stands for “Female Iron Pipe”. We have some iron pipe hanky panky going on here fer sure.

That is a PVC adapter device for coupling something with MIP threads to a modern PVC system. I actually got this part in the electrical department instead of the plumbing department, so I presume it is intended for electrical conduit. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. It fits.

Finally, I found these:

Those are general purpose O-rings. They are only 15/16″ inside diameter and the threads on the Hose Barb are 1″ across, but they should be able to stretch over the 1″ threads. Yeah, I know….the thread standard on the Hose Barb says that the threads are 3/4″ MIP. But they measure 1″ across. That is because the standard is for the inside diameter of the pipe, not the outside. Pipe standards are strange things…. and don’t get me started on lumber dimensions…..

Anyway, that is all the parts I needed. I suppose you could call that my bucket list.

So, here is what I did. I screwed the Hose Barb into the hole in the bucket lid.

I stretched an O-ring over the threads on the inside of the lid.

On the other side of the PVC adapter, I found a smooth part where the PVC pipe would be glued. No threads in there.

I didn’t need that part since I won’t be gluing anything into it, and it makes the thing stick down into the bucket too far, so I cut that part off with a saw.

Screw the nut onto the threaded end of the hose barb….

And there ya go…… the hose barb is securely fastened to the center of the bucket lid.

Here’s the other side.

This is how the hose fits onto the transformed lid.

That’s it. That is my fix.

Yesterday I brewed up a batch of Honey Porter and poured it into the bucket to ferment. I am trying out my new Big Hose fixture to see how it works.

Looks pretty neat.

I had to put a tiny little plug into that itsy bitsy hole I was using before in order to seal the bucket. Here is a photo of it to show you the difference between the sizes of the two holes.

Cute plug. Pretty cool. I can’t wait to hear those old, friendly bloops of gas bubbles coming out of my new Big Hose setup instead of the silly bblbllblbl… of that wimpy little hose.