BeerBorg

Disclaimer: What you are about to read is true and I have had nothing to drink this morning but coffee.

I'll start out by saying that I've never seen a ghost or a space alien but I may have seen several UFOs a few times in my life. I'm still using the same 6.5 gallon Ale Pails that I bought over 4 years ago and they have been used in making a lot of beer since then. About five batches ago the airlocks stopped showing any signs of activity throughout the entire fermentation. There were a few bubbles in them but not the crazy activity I had been used to seeing in earlier batches.

I think the lids have finally lost the airtight seal that they had when new and now the Co2 is escaping from under the lids. I could use my Co2 tank and pressure test them, by rigging up some tubing and hose clamps, to see if the lids are leaking but I haven't yet. The fermentations have all been held in the mid 60's with the help of a sensor in a thermowell and a controller to run the chest freezer. The beers have all been at or below 6% alcohol with good attenuation and they all tasted good.

I know there's nothing supernatural going on here but when the yeast creates all that Co2 where else can it be going?

If you're fermenting in a chest freezer (I do too), you know that thing fills up with CO2. I learned this quickly when I stuck my head inside to see how that first beer was doing. Nasty burning sensation. Whether you see airlock activity or not, your fermentation chamber should be filling up with CO2.

Btw, I quit using an airlock when I started using the chest freezer. I use a loosely capped piece of sanitized aluminum foil. Nothing is going to fall into the carboy and with the freezer filling up with CO2 even all oxygen is forced out. I don't think the beer could be safer. I even get slightly better than normal attenuation I have to adjust for. I chalk that up to zero pressure inside the carboy. The yeast really is free to have at it. I don't know for sure.

I don't airlock my LBC's, and if I got any other kind of fermenter I'd make sure I could run it without an airlock as well. A loose fitting lid that drops below the lip at the top that keeps airborn bugs from "falling in" or "blowing in" is all that is necessary. Beer infecting bugs can not crawl up and get in. Unless you are giving your fermenter a bear hug every day and sucking in the air, it's fine.

So I call this "semi open" fermenting because I am not gasketing the lids and they are on very loosely. No pressure builds up in the fermenter at all. They pretty much freely vent.

I get great attenuation, I get wonderful ester profiles from Belgian and Wheat yeasts doing this as well. And clean yeasts still stay clean as long as you keep temps low.

Airlocks are overrated. At least for primary fermentation. If you are bulk aging, then I'd put an airlock on the secondary. But I don't secondary anything anymore. Only thing I would, would be a sour. But if I decided to brew a real sour again, and I was aging the sour in a carboy, I'd be plugging up the carboy with a tapered wooden dowel, not an airlock.

My bucket does the same. I judge fermentation by a rise in temp. If I have doubts, I shine a light through the lid or side. I'm pretty careful about airlocks because my basement is heavily contaminated.
I've seen plenty of space aliens. I worked with them in the service, arrested them in the 'hood, and I'm pretty sure I dated at least one.

Bigfoot????

Yeah, I have had the same happen a time or two. Like the two batches I have fermenting now. I have an IPA in a corny keg with a blow off tube on the co2 in post. The other batch I have in a bucket with a blow off tube where the airlock would go in the lid. Neither fermenter was showing any bubbles in the jar of sanitizer, but yet as Pudge said open the chest freezer and bam you get hit with the co2 and great smell of fermentation. So I did some investigating and found the screw on "cap" of the co2 disconect was not tight and thats where the co2 was escaping. I tightened it down and now that keg is pumping co2 bubbles like a machine gun. On the other hand, the bucket is not showing any bubles yet it's sitting at 66* with full krausen. So my lid must not be air tight because the tubing going into the lid is a very snug fit.

But as you said, that Co2 is going somewhere.

So "Screwybrewer" has seen UFOs.

I believe in Ghost's, I just don't believe there are any in my house (I HOPE)!

I had that happen once and I realized that I had put the airlock on and then moved the Ale Pale to my closet to ferment. In doing so I created some type of weird vacuum and was getting no airlock activity. I peeled up the lid, got a "whoosh" of air/co2 exchange and then resealed it. It was only 24 or 48 hours in so plenty of co2 was produced afterwards and the batch was fine.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

I've seen them all, mostly while in the Navy and on liberty over seas.

I was looking in on the fermentors last night and after lifting the freezer lid bam! Hit square in the face by the smell of sulfur combined with Co2, ugh geezz that's an odor you won't soon forget. I left the lid open and fanned some air inside the freezer by waving a mouse pad back and forth over it, but man the whole brew room reeked so bad I had to go back inside the house.

Sulfur is how I know I'm making good Kolsch.

Hmm... I need to make a Kolsch.