Allen wrote: I followed the directions to a "tee" but, now after nearly 48 hours in the bucket/fermenter, I see no sign of fermentation. Any suggestions? Any advice?
Go to the cocktail hours at the embassy?
There are lots of things which could cause your fermentation to fail to kick off. Given your location one immediately forms the picture of your brewing kit sitting in a container baking in the middle eastern sun on the tarmac of some airport as it made it way to you. IOW it is possible the yeast were not viable when they arrived. Another possibility is that you did not cool the wort sufficiently before pitching so that the yeast got killed, again by heat, in that way. A third is that the yeast were not viable when they left the supplier. This should not happen but it does. A fourth is that you did not aerate the wort sufficiently. If this is indeed responsible and the yeast were viable then the fermentation may start. Give it another day or so. Eventually it will begin to ferment but the longer it takes the greater the liklihood that it is local flora and not the yeast you pitched that are responsible. If that's the case you can expect the beer to be pretty awful.
You can detect the onset of fermentation well before it is obvious if you illuminate the surface of the wort at an acute angle with a flashlight and look across the surface also at an acute angle. If the surface scintillates (tiny CO2 bubbles breaking the surface) that's an indication that you are off and running. You should have a foam island or 2 within a couple of hours of that.
I expect you have been briefed but be careful. We were advised, for example, not to leave beer cans in the trash in hotel rooms.
