Adding more yeast at later time

Call it poor research, poor planning, bad advice or all of the above...
5 days ago I brewed a 5.5 gallon batch of Hefe. I used a singe pack of Wyest Bavarian Wheat #3638, without a starter. The little yeasty beasties worked hard for about 48 hours then slowed to minor burp. Since then the bubble rate has slowed to 1 per minute or slightly more. The temp has been locked in at 65-66 degrees since post boil. I probably should have used a starter or a second smack pack of yeast. My question is, would it be ok to add a second smack now or do I have to live with what I'v got?

Why do you think you need to add more? Airlock activity is not a good sign of fermentation. Yeast do a lot of things after they stop bubbling. Gravity is the only way to tell. I would let it sit a few more days and take a gravity reading. If at that point it is too high then you may need to do something about it.

Airlock activity is not a definitive sign of continuing yeast activity. Also, in a reasonable OG beer (~1.055 or below), it's not unusual for the bulk of fermentation to complete in 48 hours. Take a gravity reading right now. Then take one tomorrow to see if it's still dropping. Then and only then decide, based on what you want FG to be, whether or not you need to pitch more yeast.

And yes, you can pitch more yeast to get your FG where you want it (to some extent). But don't expect it to bubble like crazy --there's likely not enough simple sugars left in the beer for another round of vigorous fermentation.

Beat me to it, hyper!

Thumbs up for you!

Heh just trying to help the guy or gal out.

Thumbs up for you![/QUOTE]

Thanks for the reference!!

One smack pack will ferment your beer, you may have under pitched a bit but it will make beer. No reason to use another smack pack, they are expensive.

The OG was 1.046, targeting 1.020 - 1.018. I'll take a quick reading on Sat and see how it's progressing. Thanks for talking me off the ledge....

BTW, I'm a dude...dude.

That's not a hard number to hit at all and if your smack pack was relatively fresh, your cell count was plenty high enough. I'm betting you're going to come in BELOW where you expect as it is. Let us know.

2thumbsup said:

BTW, I'm a dude...dude.

Click to expand...

Heh I figured but I didn't want to assume.

Your good with that ammont of yeast..Your supposed to underpitch with hefe's to make the yeast produce alot of esters.. its fine

After 4.5 weeks in the primary, I took the FG reading and ... it ended up 1.010. Great aroma and good flavor. Can't wait to taste on of the bad boys after a couple of weeks in the bottle. Thanks for talking me off the wall.