Think I messed up....

Hi All,

I'm in a bit of a panic over here. I brewed last night and I think I messed up the yeast rehydration. I misread the instructions and I boiled the water on the stove, removed it from the heat, added the yeast while it was really hot still and then moved to a measuring cup. After I moved it to the cup I reread the instructions and saw I was supposed to wait for it to coll before adding the yeast. I am worried that I killed it. I immediately tried to cool down the cup by putting it is cold water. Then once it was cooled I pitched it. This was 6pm last night. As of 2pm today I haven't seen any activity what so ever. I planned to just go get more yeast and re-pitch tomorrow if I don't see anything but the problem with that is that the beer store I use here in Charlotte is closed on Monday. Will Tuesday morning be too late to re-pitch? Can I go get like a mr beer kit and use that yeast? I don't want to lose the batch. There is no where that I can get yeast other then mr beer until Tuesday......thoughts???

No it's not too late, just keep the primary closed up with airlock in place and once you get new yeast re-aerate and pitch.

I'd say you likely did kill the yeast. Tuesday is pushing it, but if it was me I'd get more yeast then. Mr. Beer kits have crappy yeast from what I hear..

Yea that's what I was thinking too....I actually think I just found somewhere to get it tomorrow which is much better. If I see no activity in the air lock by tomorrow morning I am going to re-pitch. I can't hurt it if I over yeast can I? As in, what if the old yeast kicks in and I add a second pack?

The cut-off point is usually considered to be 72 hours. If your gravity hasn't changed by then, you can re-pitch without worrying that you might have over pitched.

mess1153 said:

Yea that's what I was thinking too....I actually think I just found somewhere to get it tomorrow which is much better. If I see no activity in the air lock by tomorrow morning I am going to re-pitch. I can't hurt it if I over yeast can I? As in, what if the old yeast kicks in and I add a second pack?

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Overpitching is unlikely to cause too many problems at the homebrew scale. I routinely pitch two packets of dry yeast on any beer 1.060 or higher. In general, overpitching is less likely to cause problems than underpitching. Pitching rate is important to overall beer quality, but 2 packs of dry yeast in an average gravity beer will cause you no problems at all. Go ahead and do it. No need to worry!

OK great! Thank you all! I brewed a different batch today and just poured it in dry. Wasn't messing around a second time with rehydrating.

Well I re-pitched this morning about 10:30am. Put it in dry and gave it a swirl to aerate a little and now the waiting game begins. Hopefully it works! Thanks again for all your help everyone!

mess1153 said:

Well I re-pitched this morning about 10:30am. Put it in dry and gave it a swirl to aerate a little and now the waiting game begins. Hopefully it works! Thanks again for all your help everyone!

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It will work. No worries.

For future reference, rehydrating yeast is easy. Before you start boiling your wort you can put a cup of water into a mason jar, boil it in the microwave, put a sanitized lid on it, then let it cool while you boil. Usually around the time the wort is finished boiling it will be the right temp to put the yeast in (80-90 degrees in my case). If it's not below 90, I put it in the fridge for 5-10 minutes. Then sprinkle the yeast on top of the water and let it sit for 15 minutes before shaking it up. Then pitch away!

Good luck!

Well it looks like I have fermentation!!! 12 hours since the second pitch and there you have it. Glad I didn't lose that batch! Thanks again all!