I am still very new to brewing, but I have made a few extract brews. My question might be something simple, but some help would be appreciated. I have a 1 gallon test batch in primary, but it seems that fermentation is kind of slow when I compare it to other batches that I used a dry yeast. I used WYEAST 3056 and the temp has held at around 69. What could cause the slow fermentation or is this to be expected? Like I said, I am still learning and very new so any help or explaination would be helpful. This is the first time I have used a yeast in a liquid form.
Is what I mean is that I put timer on my airlock to see how often it was moving, which was around every 30-45 seconds. With the few extract batches that I have done I was able to see a rapid and a noticeable fermentation process happening. I am just not seeing this happen with this 1 gallon batch.
First of all, airlock bubbles aren’t really a good indicator. Second, there’s no reason one fermentation should look like a totally different one. Thirdly, this is a one gal. batch. There’s not much food there for the yeast. It’s entirely possible that you missed the bulk of fermentation and it’s just winding down.
If you pitched the whole pouch of liquid yeast in a one gallon batch then you definitely pitched more than enough yeast and the bulk of fermentation occurred within a few hours. Those pouches are designed to be pitched into a larger batch of beer and/or used in conjunction with a starter.
The great news for you is that you’re going to have a gallon of great beer ready in a few weeks and that gallon batch has a great amount of fresh yeast that you can repitch in a larger batch.