0 fermentation for 6 days then sudden activity?!?!?!

I have never seen this before. For the first 6 days I had no activity in the airlock. I took a reading and was still at the O.G. of 1.060. I got all pissed off and said F-it and did nothing. The next day the air lock is going nuts...

What the heck happened?

Is underpitching a possibility from your process?

Did the temperature change at all on that day or the day before?

Did you accidentally not seal the lid well the first day, then inadvertantly reseal it when you took the reading?

Just tossin ideas out there! Its hard to determine without knowing your recipe and processes so I'm just hoping one of these ideas rings a bell with you

Perhaps you agitated the yeast into suspension and they decided to do their job. One suggestion I've seen before is to gently rock the fermentation vessel if you're stuck. Or maybe a few curses made them feel guilty at their laziness.

Forget to pitch the yeast or get a bad pack? Then when you took the reading you introduced something wild and it took off?

AHS promo IPA
This beer recipe is based on a traditional American IPA from the 1940's. It features Munich, Crystal 60L, Cluster, Northern Brewer, and Yakima Golding hops. This O.G. has an O.G. of 1.060. Approximately 6% ABV.
White Labs Cali. yeast

I gave it a vigorous stir after 3 days.

The lid seemed to be sealed when I have opened it.

It's been in a foam fermentation chamber the whole time, so temp should be stable.

Temp of your fermentation chamber?

Could something have happened with the temperature probe or something that chilled it down too far, and then was fixed when you opened it up to take your gravity sample?

Maybe the change is the temp outside brought it up just enough to ignite the yeast. (It's been in the basement)

My best guess would be the yeast got impaired somehow (heat?), possibly during shipping, and took a LONG time to reproduce enough live yeast to get things going.

ChshreCat said:

Forget to pitch the yeast or get a bad pack? Then when you took the reading you introduced something wild and it took off?

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That's what it sorta seems like...

electric_beer said:

That's what it sorta seems like...

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Possible, but I'm leaning more towards temps.

ChshreCat said:

Possible, but I'm leaning more towards temps.

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I'm probably bias since I just had a washed starter get infected. Thankfully I didn't think it looked right so I pitched some US-5, two days later there was major infection going on in the starter...tempted to make a wild brew.