Starter is just now going after 4 days.

Wednesday nght I smacked my Ringwood ale yeast and let sit four hours before I bitched it in my sarter. The pack never swelled. There have been no signs of fermentation until friday night I saw a few bubbles. So I re-aerated and saturday morning fermentation is going pretty good. I am going to brew today. I have three options. I can put my wort on some 1056 I bottled off of yesterday, I could ptich some us-05. Neither of these yeast will give me the taste i'm looking for. I could pitch the Ringwood but I'm scared of infection after 4 days without fermenting. It is an IPA. Let me know what you would do. Thanks

If you followed sanitization practices correctly you'll be just fine. I wouldn't change up yeasts, let the starter go a little longer.

that's what i was leaning towards. Thanks

I would let your starter finish and use your starter as though it were a smack pack to do a new starter. I have had this happen to me when I buy old expired yeast packs at a discount or let one sit for too long. For me the problem is that a large portion of the yeast in the starting smck pack or test tube were not viable. I end up doing another second starter batch using the yeast I just grew.

When I haven't done this I have under pitched yeast and the beer did not fully ferment. It is possible to over pitch yeast, but I haven't seen it with this method yet.

The yeast population needs to be at a certain level to consume he alcohol. They can oly reproduce so many times in the changing enviro of the fermentor.

Hope this helps.

Drinking beer affects my spelling. The yeast consume sugar, of course.

Update time. I went ahead and brewed Sat afternoon. Sunday afternoon there was a little activity but Monday morning things were rocking and rolling. Thanks for the advice.

Please let us know if it hits your target final gravity.

Update time again. My target final gravity was about 1.020. It started to ferment on the Aug 18. I racked to secondary and dry hopped about a week later and the gravity was 1.018 and still bubbling. Today on sept 4 it is still going (every 15 seconds or so) and gravity is at 1.014. There has to be some bacterial infection. I'm not sure what to do cause the beer doesn't taste bad. I'm thinking about cold crashing for about a week and kegging it. Any more input?

You should just let the fermentation finish, there's not much you can do to stop it. If you cold crash, you will have to keep the beer near freezing forever, or else you risk it restarting and over carbonating, causing bottle bombs etc.

What made you think it would stop at 1.020? An infection is possible, of course, but it seems likely that you just have a healthy, attenuating yeast that are doing their job. It may have taken the yeast a while to ramp up, particularly if you had a slow start. 1.014 is not an unusually low F.G..

I was just checking my brew records. 7 of my last 9 fermentations hit 1.010. The other two were 1.012. What makes you think 1.020 is an acceptable FG?

Hopville says it is supposed to be 1.020. I have never had a fermentation last so long either but this is the first time I have ever had yeast problems like I did. I probably am just paranoid.

So it's been a few weeks, how did it turn out? What was your FG?

after 4 Weeks the air lock never stopped bubbling but the gravity seemed to stop at 1.012. I just went ahead and cold crashed it and kegged it. it taste good. I can't pick up any off flavors. must have just been a really slow fermentation from the bad yeast. thanks for the input