Today is the day!! Started my first batch of beer about 5 minutes ago…got the grains steeping right now! Decided to start out with a 1gal White House Honey Ale kit since my wife and I couldn’t decide if we wanted that or a German Blonde first (so we got 1gal kits of each and we’re gonna see which one we’d rather drink 5gal of!)
I’ll report back later…haven’t been this excited since i did my first batch of wine!!
:cheers:
EDIT: problem occurred on 2nd day…scroll down for details…
That sounds great - enjoy the hobby as it turns into a lifestyle, then an obsession!
:cheers:
I want a German Blonde for my B-day :lol:
Welcome to the fraternity!
Have you been told the secret password?
How about the secret handshake? :cheers:
You will want to make 5 gallons of both. 
so, something interesting has happened…On Brewday, the airlock was bubbling faster than my hearbeat, but the next day it was barely pushing out a bubble every two minutes. I decided to make the German Blonde kit later on Brewday and that one is still chugging along nicely, but the White House Honey Ale is just barely producing CO2. When it started fermenting it was violently swirling around inside the jug. Now, it’s starting to separate out.
I added 1/2tsp of Yeast Energizer yesterday and put it in a warm water bath (which i kept at a pretty constant temp for a few hours) thinking that maybe it just got colder than the yeast liked, but today is the start of day three and it’s still just barely pushing out bubbles. I put it back in a warm water bath (took it out over night in case the water got too cold) and it’s speeding up, but i can’t tell if it’s just CO2 release from being heated, or if the yeast are becoming active again. I don’t really see any bubbles popping on the surface, and the wort is still separating out, not mixing up like the German Blonde is still doing.
Is there a chance my fermentation is stuck? if so, what else could i do to coax it along? I might be new to beer, but i’ve fermented quite a few things before and this is either the fastest fermentation ever, or something went wrong.
help!!!
Never, ever trust your airlock. While it’s a beautiful sound and a surefire sign that gases are being put out by the yeasties it is otherwise a liar. Everyone here will tell you that a silent airlock is also just as fine a sound as the bubbly one. My advice is to simply leave the beer alone. When your airlock has gone silent that’s no indication the yeast has. They’re still quietly plugging away underneath.
Next time you get an impulse (no matter how urgent it seems) post it here and double check. Odds are you could end up doing more harm than good. We’re not the fastest responders, but the likely answer, in all of my experiences, has been “Leave your beer alone. It’s fine.”
Welcome to the club, man! It’s a long, arduous, horrible, beautiful thing. I like that you started out with 1 gallons. Though you’ll leap fairly soon I’m sure to 3.5 or 5 gallons those will be handy to have around for experimental batches once you get your routine down.
Your fermentation is probably about over, but leave it a few more days. Yeast will metabolize some by-products towards the end of fermentation so you don’t want to rsh it off the yeast cake. Honey is really easy for yeast to ferment and it sounds like it just fermented faster.
I’d watch your fermentation temps too. Get it a bit too warm and it really goes fast and this isn’t good for the taste, you get a lot of esters. But lets not declare your beer to be bad prematurely.
If the wind just picked up in Milwaukee, don’t worry, it was just my sigh of relief. I’m used to about two weeks of constant bubbling with my wine so I got a bit worried. I’ll let it sit a few more days and post again if I have any more concerns. Thanks all, CHEERS!
With only a gallon in the batch, you can’t really pull a lot of samples…so just leave it be for 3 weeks and proceed from there to bottle or carbonate in growlers.
Carbonate in growlers??? Is that possible?
I’ve carbonated in growlers when I had extra post filling up a keg. Primed it with sugar, filled it, and sealed the cap really well. Although it works, I don’t recommend it. Maybe in a pinch?
