It stopped bubbling! Did I kill it?

General Homebrew Discussion
1

I’m on my 3rd batch so I’m still a neophyte. On Saturday (2 days ago) I brewed a Pumpkin Ale. Within 24 hours there was a lot of bubbling going on in the airlock (temperature was 68-70 degrees). As I live in Florida, and don’t own a brewing dedicated fridge, I keep my fermenting bucket in a tub with cold water/ice, covered with a t-shirt to wick up the cold water to keep the temperature below 70

This morning (Monday) I noticed that the temp was creeping up, so I began to drain out the water from the tub to replace it with colder water/ice. By accident I jostled the bucket slightly, and shortly thereafter it stopped bubbling! I should add that after I replaced the water the temp went down to 66-68.

My question is did I kill anything?  Have I caused irreparable harm to my pumpkin ale? Or…is it okay and just give it a couple of days before I do my next gravity test to see where I am? Is this a function that the temp went down, slowing down the fermentation process?

Thanks for any assistance you can give here.

Cheers,

Peter

2

I am 100% sure you are fine. Airlock activity isn’t the best indicator of fermentation. You may have cooled it a little too quickly, but if so it will come back. Give it at least two weeks before bothering to check gravity.

3

Cold air exerts less pressure. By cooling your fermenter it will take more CO2 production to build up enough pressure to push through the airlock. You’re fine. RDWHAHB

4

Cooling the fermenter will cause the gas inside to shrink. That is often enough to cause bubbling to stop.
It’ll likely start bubbling again as soon as enough CO2 builds up.

RDWHAHB

5

Does the opposite stand true? If so that explains the extra bubbles in the hot tub

6

LOL

7

Are you sure those bubbles aren’t “man-made”? LOL

8

You got one of those newfangled “sulfur springs” hot tubs?

I wonder how much gypsum it would take to produce the “Burton snatch” in someone’s hot tub…

9

  1. No, I just use other people’s hot tubs.

  2. Not sure, maybe Martin would know

10

So in the end it never started to re-bubble. Hopefully all is still well…

11

I guarantee you’re fine. Buckets rarely seal 100% air-tight. The most vigorous part of fermentation is likely done by now, so the CO2 that is being produced may just be slipping out a leaky lid instead of pushing through the airlock. It’s going to be OK. You’re going to make beer, and it will be good. It’s just the newbie jitters talking. RDWHAHB

12

Check the gravity. It’s the only way to know.

But yeah, it’s pretty unlikely that you have a problem.

13

Thank you!