Nothing Happens At Ten

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.