Gluten Free Possible Stuck Fermentation

PA Brewer

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Hi long time lurker with a story and looking for some advice.

I recently tried two new things 1) a new yeast (at least to me) bry-97 and 2) brewing a gluten free beer.

First, here is my foray into use with bry-97. A couple of weeks ago a was brewing a simple session SMASH and decided to try bry-97 dry yeast. I had read that it was a slow starter, so I decided to make a 1 quart starter (not something I usually do with dry yeasts) I let the starter run for about 24 hours and pitched it into my wort at 70F on Thursday night. I didn't see any real activity Friday morning and then went away for the weekend. When I came back on Sunday afternoon and checked on the brew it was at 73F high krausen had passed and fair amount of krausen had flowed through the airlock and made a mess on the bucket lid. I was pretty impressed as this is the first time I've ever had a yeast do this (I brew 5 gal batches in a 6.5 gal brew bucket). So I cleaned up the mess replaced the airlock and let the yeast do their thing for a few more days. I pulled a sample on that Friday (8 days since pitching) and hit an FG a little lower than I was expecting, so I racked it to the secondary.

So I was pretty happy with the bry-97 yeast and decided I would use it again on my first gluten free brew, which is another simple beer (6 lbs sorghum extract for a 5 gal batch). So being a good experimenter :p I choose to change as many variables as I could in addition to going GF: first I did not make a starter and decided just to rehydrate the yeast (1-packet) prior to pitching, second I pitched it a little warmer (wort was at 76F), third I placed the fermentor in a water bath which has been keeping the fermentor a little cooler around 68-70F. I think I'm regretting my decision not to make a starter, It took two days to notice any airlock activity and now after four days I'm not seeing much airlock activity at all.

So now I'm wondering what to do...I usually like to leave the yeasties alone to do their thing with out being bothered, but given how much less activity I'm seeing in this batch vs. the last I'm beginning to worry. So I'm thinking about popping the lid and taking a gravity sample.

Any thoughts on why this could be happening? Is it typical for gluten free beers to take longer to ferment / ferment less vigorously?
 
Bit of a false alarm, although there was no activity in the airlock I opened the lid to see a nice head of krausen bubbling away...I guess my bucket lid must have had a bit of a leak that was allowing CO2 to escape from.
 
PA Brewer said:
I guess my bucket lid must have had a bit of a leak that was allowing CO2 to escape from.
Had that once too. One of the "nicest" problem-solving discoveries to make... :D
 

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