Cold and dormant?

I made two batches (one on Weds and one on Thurs) last week and stuck them in my fermentation chamber with a couple blocks of ice to cool them down to 68 degrees.
However, come Friday my wife ended up having our baby a little earlier than expected and with the outside temps plus the ice, my fermenting wort dropped to around 60 degrees by the time I got back home.
They were both bubbling happily with a nice thick layer of krausen when I left, however now that I've heated them back up to 68 and gave them a swirl to suspend the yeast, only the batch that I did on Weds is bubbling at this point.

Both batches were using Danstar Nottingham dry yeast and though one was a cream ale and the other an amber ale, both were just about the same SG at the beginning of fermentation.

I didn't think that yeast could really become dormant from the cold, but seeing that one is bubbling away again and the other isn't, it's certainly got me wondering.

Worst case, I'll re-pitch if the gravity still seems high next week, but I am still definitely curious.

Nottingham can go through its real active stage quite quickly so the one that isn't bubbling may just have finished that phase while the other has a ways to go yet. Besides that, they're yeast, they do what they want when they want. I think they will both be fine.

Congratulations on becoming a papa!

You can lager with Nottingham so I don't think that they went dormant, but if you started at 68 and dropped 8 degrees then it is a possibility. The only way you can know for sure is to take a gravity reading.

wyzazz said:

You can lager with Nottingham so I don't think that they went dormant, but if you started at 68 and dropped 8 degrees then it is a possibility. The only way you can know for sure is to take a gravity reading.

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Oh yeah, I think I recall that about Nottingham!
Turns out I was a little incorrect though, the one that's still going is Nottingham, the other is Windsor. Not sure if that one handled the temps as well...
I'll give it a few days though before I break out the refractometer on it. There still seemed to be a decent amount of yeast on top, but not much activity other than that (No foam, airlock action, or swirling within')

Thanks!

I'd move the Windsor inside where it's warm, English yeasts tend to like a little heat.