Worried about the yeast.

So I brewed my first batch of beer eariler and I was chilling my wort in the fermentor by ladling it over ice. It worked too well as temp reading were at 67 - 65F. Since I was new at this and on my own I quickly rehydrated the yeast packets and pitched it into the chilled wort. I fear that I either made the yeast dorment or worse. There is no activity within the airlock although it has been less than 12 hrs.

If I have really screwed this batch up, is there anything I can do to save it?

Thanks,
Chris

What's the ambient temperature? I'll bet you're fine.

65-67 is actually a good temperature for fermentation of most ale yeasts. Lag time with dry yeasts can be as much as 48 hours in my experience so give it a couple days before you start worrying. I think you'll be fine.

you could get some more yeast if you're worried, but i'd say you're fine.

Sounds like everything you did was perfect. Nothing wrong with pitching at 65deg. I'll bet you have fermentation within a day.

well it started to get pretty warm here today (for april at least) 75 degrees. so the house is about that. I'll wait and see what happens.

you don't want your beer fermenting at that high a temperature. wait till it gets going, of course, but try to keep it under 75 and probably above 65, depending on the yeast. what yeast did you use, anyway?

You want to keep your fermenting temps to around 68ish. Once your fermentation takes off (have patience, it will) it will start to heat up your wort from the chemical reaction of fermentation, then you should try to keep your actual wort temps to around 68f or slightly less.

I went downstairs this morning and I was seeing 2 - 4 bubbles coming through the air lock every 2-3 seconds so it looks like things have started off.

Someone asked what yeast I was using. Its an Munton's ale yeast.

I am not so worried about the temp in the house because the wort is in a closet under the stairs and it is noticably cooler than the rest of the house especially the second floor. If I wanted, I have an indoor/outdoor thermomitor that I can put the outside probe in the closet and keep the indoor probe in the other room and monitor the difference that way.

cool, yeah, use that thermometer and let us know how it goies. if you get the chance, pick up one of these for your fermentation vessel:
http://morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=18684

it will give you a better idea of the actual temperature of your wort.

Now that it's fermenting, leave it be. That beer has a mind of it's own and it knows what to do. Get in there and take a gravity reading every couple of days if you want to know how things are progressing. Don't rely on the "bubbler".

Keep things sanitary and do not pitch your sample back into the wort.

Sounds like you're well on your way to a good brew.

I hope it is still doing something because there is no activity in the airlock now. I noticed that it had slowed greatly last night and this morning there was no airlock activity and the same is true this afternoon., so I don't have a clue of what is going on.

To make matters worse, I really don't have a recipe to go by so OG is not very useful to me. I was trying to make a porter but the ingredients in the kit pushed the beer closer to sweet stout and im my hast and panic about the starting temp I dodn't take a gravity reading. I guess I could start taking readings and note changes but I don't really have a target to shoot for.

I think my first mistake was to rely too heavily on time telling me when things should happen and less on actual science.

Out of all of this I did found out one nice thing. The closet I am using to ferment in stays cool even in very warm temps. Outside it is 83, the living room is 75 and the closet that is in the power room off of the living room is 68 all without the AC running. I think the fact that it is pitch black in there and the water main runs through helps.

Don't worry, be happy...

If you know the ingredients that you used, you can estimate your OG pretty easily.

Ok took a hydrometer reading this afternoon. it was reading 1.021. There was no krausern (sp?) but I did notice some stuff that was above the water line, where I suspect the foam was. It smelled like beer and although warm it tasted like beer. Had kind of a Newcastle Brown ale look to it.

Ingredients:
2 cans muntons dark liquid malt
3/4 lb of crystal malt
(crappy kitchen scale couldn't get accurate readings on the 1/2 oz bags of hop pellets)
about 3/4 pouch of cascade hops 60 min
Hallertau maybe an 1/4 of a pouch
Fuggles about 1/2 pouch
5 gal of water.

still the same as a 3 days ago.

I am not sure what to do with this beer. It doesn't taste great but I can't tell if that is because its warm, or if its just a bad beer. It doesn't smell bad or anythig just a bit watery.

Do you think if I put it into the carboy and dry hopped it I could improve on the flavor any?

1.021 isn't that bad. i use to bottle at around that FG all the time when i started. depends on your OG, of course, but i dont think that Muntons LME is very fermentable, so you may have reached your max.

I'm not a big fan of dry-hopping myself (i know, everyone can flame me now). I'd say bottle or keg it and enjoy!

Are there better extracts than others? Is there a good to bad scale here or on another site?

i'm not saying it's "bad", but as a primary ingredient, Liquid Malt Extract is not going to usually be as fermentable, so you've got a lot of sugars left in there. That has nothing to do with a watered-down taste, though and , like i said, 1.021 is not a bad FG.

if all you're worried about is the beer being a little watered down, then relax and bottle that sucker. it's summer! a nice light beer will go down good and believe me, it will taste alot better once it's carbonated.

You've successfully finished fermentation of your first brew and in a couple of weeks you can taste it, see what you like or don't like, and try again!

RDWHAHB!

Bottle it.

Sounds like it's done. Get it into bottles, set it aside and forget about it for 3-4 weeks. It'll be good beer.

Get on to your next batch.

Since my last post on this topic I was in a car accident and my time was taken up finding a replacement car so my brew was sitting around in the fermentation bucket for a few weeks just hanging out. Now my plan was to move the beer to my carboy so that I could clean my fermenter so that I could move the beer back into the bucket from the carboy to add the priming sugar and bottle.

Strange thing is that I moved the brew to the carboy on Sunday and yesterday I noticed a few areas sitting on top of the wort that looked like little bubbles. I was kinda worried but wanted to take a wait and see approach. Today there is much more activity and even airlock activity as well. No fuzz or strange colors just bubbles. This fermenation activity comes a couple of weeks after I made the wort and fermentation seemed to cease.

Is it possible that I woke up the yeast by moving them from one vessel to another? Is this a good thing and will there be enough yeast to go around to bottle condition?

Most likely you woke up the yeast and its converting some of those sugar to good old beer. If you're worried about making beer bombs, take a gravity reading and wait a day or two to see how much it changes. Just make sure when you bottle that you add the appropriate amount of corn sugar and the yeast will make the carbonation.

Then wait two weeks...if you can...to condition the beer in the bottles. Then enjoy!

because I am not worried about the yeast anymore...

It definately looks like I woke up the yeast as its still bubbling along. I am going to wait another day or two to see if it slows to take a hydrometer reading. Since the last reading was at a disappointing 1.02x this extra activity can't be a bad thing. The smell coming from the airlock doesn't smell any different than it did before bubbling away in the primary so i am okay with just letting it go. I don't have enough bottles yet anyway.


Now for a completely off topic question. Fermentation gives off CO2 right and plants convert CO2 to O2, i'm beginning to wonder if the house plants will be able to comsume the co2 that is ligering in the bathroom closet if I put them in the bathroom and thrive any more than if I leave them in the living room just off the bathroom...

Ha, ha, ha...maybe it will get the plants drunk.

But that batch turned out very nicely. It has been 3 weeks since bottling and I have had a few during the course of last week and I think it tastes really good. I will need to brew more since I am at a case and a half. Since I did a 2-3-3 timeframe 'cause of personal reasons I don't want to run out. hehe