WYeast 1028 London ?'s

I just created(plagiarized) my first recipe using many resources for a Christmas ale. Everything went fine with cooking, I cooled the mix and pitched the yeast in the recommended range. This was on Saturday. I'm used to yeast taking a day or day and a half to work so I checked it on Sunday night and had no bubbling. Checked again Monday morning and still nothing.

At this point, should I be worried? Is it OK to open the bucket at this point and see if anything is going on?

If the yeast isn't working, is there anything I can do to rescue the batch?

Thanks!

Did you make a starter? You can experience longer lag times without one. Wyeast 1028 usually starts up in about 12-18 hours for me, but I pretty much always use starters and pitch them when they are fully active.

There is no harm at all at opening the bucket briefly to see if there is activity. I open mine to top-crop yeast regularly now. Sometimes the lid just isn't fitting as well as it has in the past and your airlock won't bubble.

If you do just have a dud batch of yeast, there is no harm in getting some new yeast and pitching that right in (make a starter).

Good advice there from NCBeernut- your beer may be fermenting, but if your bucket isn't sealed well, you'll not see airlock activity.
That London Ale yeast just made a delicious porter for me.

It was one of those packs that has the bubble in it to pop, I believe the directions said to pop it and shake it to activate. It was in a slurry form, not the solid.

Do you know the OG? was it an activator or propagator?

It was an activator, and the OG around 1.077.

Is it possible that it's already done bubbling out?

buckeyejb said:

It was an activator, and the OG around 1.077.

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That's a pretty big beer to brew without a starter. My guess is within the next 24-36 hours you'll see activity. That would be a good time to take a gravity reading, too.

You do have dry yeast on hand for emergency use, don't you? If not, see if you can't procure some in the meantime.

put a little keg lube on the o-ring, that should seal stuff up

I think the bucket is sealed tight, when I press on the lid, the lock bubbles. Opened the bucket and nothing is going on. I have a pack of dry yeast to pitch, I may give it to til the morning. Lesson learned with the yeast, thanks for the tips!

Pitched the dry yeast and it's fermenting away. Is it possible that I didn't prepare the original yeast properly? I popped the smack pack and shook it up and dumped it in after aerating the wort. Is there something else I should have done differently to this style of yeast?

buckeyejb said:

Pitched the dry yeast and it's fermenting away. Is it possible that I didn't prepare the original yeast properly? I popped the smack pack and shook it up and dumped it in after aerating the wort. Is there something else I should have done differently to this style of yeast?

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Give it time to get going. I'm assuming you took it out of the fridge, smacked and shoot it, and then immediately pitched into your wort all within 2 or 3 minutes. Usually you have to let the yeast come up to room temp and let the pack expand to make sure that the yeast are alive and well.

Pitching cold yeast into the warm wort will shock the yeast. (Like walking out of your house during a snow storm in your boxer shorts and standing still.)