Cold yeast into high OG brew

Hi all,

I put what I'm calling a "Latte Export Stout" into primary yesterday. I measured OG at 1.070 and I pitched Nottingham Ale Yeast at 58F. It's been about 15 hours, and there is a significant amount of sediment in the primary. The fermometer says 64F at the moment.

I'm a bit worried about the yeast. I pitched half a sachet of Nottingham into a 2.5 gallon brew. The package was opened several weeks ago, very well wrapped in the back of a cold fridge. I rehydrated it at 80F and proofed the yeast, seeing good activity.

What should I be expecting for lag time, here? There's no activity, yet.

Oh, additional question. When we talk about conditioning periods, I notice that people use "high gravity" and "high ABV" interchangeably. High gravity and high ABV beers are expected to require longer conditioning times. I don't think these are interchangeable, though. 1.070 seems like a high OG beer, but there are a lot of unfermentable sugars and it should finish at around 1.017.

Is my intuition correct, here? Is it high ABV or high OG beers that require long conditioning times? Or both?

JProulx said:

Oh, additional question. When we talk about conditioning periods, I notice that people use "high gravity" and "high ABV" interchangeably. High gravity and high ABV beers are expected to require longer conditioning times. I don't think these are interchangeable, though. 1.070 seems like a high OG beer, but there are a lot of unfermentable sugars and it should finish at around 1.017.

Is my intuition correct, here? Is it high ABV or high OG beers that require long conditioning times? Or both?

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Depends on the style. A high abv imperial stout will do well to age for months! But you wouldn't want to age a super hoppy high abv DIPA. All that wonderful hoppiness would fade away.

mrrshotshot said:

Depends on the style. A high abv imperial stout will do well to age for months! But you wouldn't want to age a super hoppy high abv DIPA. All that wonderful hoppiness would fade away.

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Oh, it's the same idea as cellaring, then. That makes sense to me. Great, so this one will probably be good with 4 or 5 weeks of bottle conditioning.

Thanks!

I think you should be fine, give it time.

Cyclman said:

I think you should be fine, give it time.

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Yeah this was a bad topic. 24 hours in, it's fermenting like crazy. Krausen is huge right now.