).It is a 30l wash with 5kg sugar, juice of 1 lemon, ~60g dead yeast, 150ml tomato paste and about 10 tbsp tomato fertilizer. I stirred it thoroughly to aerate the wash and remove any lumps in the mix. Then I pitched the yeast without a thermometer, silly I know, at 36C (which I now know to be far too hot). They started fermenting very vigorously, the bubbling was audible when I put my ear to the container, and when I came back from dinner (about 30 mins later) an inch thick foam had developed - I stirred it and put a blanket over it before I went to bed.
The next morning I checked it and all of the yeast had sunk to the bottom, there was no sound when I put my ear to the side, nor when I opened the lid. I could tell that it was very hot though, and the thermometer read about 36.5-37C and from what I've read it seemed as though I'd put it into thermal runaway, so I assumed I'd killed them with too much heat. I let it cool down to about 30C and pitched another 125g yeast and stirred it with some marmite for B-vitamins, after about 30 mins a smaller (1cm) foam formed and I thought i had it sorted. When I first checked today (24 hrs later) the bubbling slowed so I could hear it if i opened the lid, but otherwise it was silent, and the second time I checked (about 4 hours after) it had stopped completely.
Could it be that I haven't aerated the wash properly before pitching? Did I add too much fertilizer/nutrient? Or am I just being over-paranoid?
Chiller
