Brewing day 4 - is it fermenting.....?

The day after the brew is a bit of an anxious one. Has the yeast started the business of fermentation? Has the beer or the yeast picked up some unmentionable nasty which will get started on the process of making it entirely undrinkable? Should I poke and prod it to see if it's ok? Or will this banjax the entire operation?

There's a lot of waiting in all this, which I find quite nerve-wracking.

Anyway, we got up this morning to find that there was a very promising looking cover over the beer as the yeast had indeed got to work in the night. Despite it being quite a cold night, even with the greenhouse heater that we use to try to regulate the temperature between 21c and 24c in the bathroom and the airing cupboard, everything seemed to be going according to plan.

And it keeps on going pretty well too. There's now a very nice looking 'rocky' head on the top of the beer, undulating in a slightly freaky way when we lift the lid (laid on loosely at this point to protect against airborne infections), and it's starting to smell very nice indeed. The picture at the top is from when we got up this morning, and the second one is from lunchtime.

Fingers crossed, then. This first stage of fermentation should keep going for 2 or 3 days, after which we'll clip the lid on, unclip a small bit of it and leave it for a few more days, until its reached its target gravity. It started at 1041.5 (or as near to it as we could get) and will be ready for the keg at 1010. Keep working, yeast....