Checked on the Chocolate Oatmeal stout again today. Temp's up another degree from yesterday, but still below 70 (67 today). Started out at 65, dropped one degree overnight, now it's on the rise. Nice looking krausen visible through the fermenter wall, something I haven't been able to see before. Can't really tell if there's significant accumulation in the catch ball yet. This stuff's got a pretty dark trub, so it may be hard to see or tell if the ball is full of trub or still beer/wort. Any suggestions when I should pull the catch ball to collect the yeast and clean it out? I'm figuring about a week, after things slow down just a bit. Bubbling pretty good today, about 3 seconds between what looks more like burps than bubbles. By next brew, I will have added a sampling spigot. Then I can pull a sample when activity slows to see where it actually is. Easy enough to watch temperature, though.
Does anyone know of a PC based application for the Tilt or other bluetooth/wifi devices available? I've looked around and everything I see wants to use my phone. I don't want it on my phone, but would love to track progress with a PC. That's probably the biggest roadblock to me buying better gadgetry.
Meant to ask but forgot. Will a spectrometer help with sampling sizes, and what all will I learn from that? I'm sure I still need to use an old-school hydrometer to check final gravity, but it wouldn't hurt to be able to do some process sampling through the ferment.