Krausen dropped after 1 day

This weekend was a nightmare as far as brewing goes. First I lost 5 gallons of finished imperial stout for St. Pattys when the bottom of the carboy fell out.

I got over my depression (or at least tried to) by brewing an extract belgian IPA. Then I had some trouble with either my false bottom, kettle spigot, or plate chiller and had really slow flow transferring the wort to the primary. After about 45 min of transfer time the 6 gallons of wort was chilled to 66-68F and I pitched 2 packets of rehydrated Safbrew-T58. The OG for this brew was 1.076. This now leads into my current problem.

Fermentation looked great on Saturday...Except the temperature was at 76F. A friend who's opinions I hold in high regard told me not to let this yeast over 75F. I wanted to drop the temp by a few degrees so I turned on the chest freezer for about 2 hours. The temperature strip on the side of the carboy now gave me about 70-72F. At this point I felt I was ok and left the carboy overnight.

Returning this morning I find the krausen fell and there was little air lock activity. I took a gravity reading and measured 1.032. I am shooting for a FG below 1.020. At this point I figured I cooled the yeast to much and put the yeast to sleep. I went the the LHBS and they old me to swirl the carboy a little bit, warm it up, and pitch another packet of yeast.

I took their advice, was this the right thing to do? I have 3 packets of yeast in this wort now.

Like I said, this was a bad weekend and b/c of the lost beer due to the carboy I'm looking at 2-4 weeks w/o homebrew.

I doubt you needed the extra yeast...but you should be okay. Just swirling the carboy should have kicked enough yeast back into suspension.

Thanks Suthrncomfrt.

Two days, 3 packets of yeast, swirling, and bringing the temp of the ferment chamber up to 72F and I am still getting only a 1-2 bubbles/min. This is the oddest fermentation I've experienced. My current plan is to let the beer sit in primary at 72F for 2 weeks and hydro test it at the 1 and 2 week mark.

The beer is fermenting, so I'd leave it alone. It'll be fine. I'd keep it under 75 degrees (as it'll get very estery and peppery) and don't mess with it. I'd check it in another week.

signal2noise said:

...I took a gravity reading and measured 1.032. I am shooting for a FG below 1.020. At this point I figured I cooled the yeast to much and put the yeast to sleep...

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It's possible the rapid cooling caused them to take a break, but it's not like you went to 50* or something...it's only a few degrees. Give 'em time to do their thing. You have plenty of yeast.

And did you taste your hydro reading? Other than being sweet, how'd it taste? Probably really fun.

Thanks Yooper!

TyTanium, I did taste the hydro measurment. It tatsed good, it definitely had some of the peppery notes that the yeast description claimed.