Safale US05 Yeast drop

Hello All,
New to the forum here but have gotten a ton of great info from you guys over the past few months for my first two extract brews. Thank you.

I just brewed my third extract batch last night - a northern brewer "ace of spades" black ipa. This is the second time that i have used the safale us05 yeast... first time was with a chinook ipa and i did not rehydrate. This time i did.

I pitched the yeast into the wort at around 74 F, after rehydrating according to manufacturer instructions. Finished up around midnight last night and had a look at the carboy this morning only to find that all of the yeast was at the bottom of the carboy. is this normal? usually i see the kraussen form on top of the wort after a couple of days and then drop out to the bottom. the only thing i am seeing right now is the yeast cake at the bottom of the carboy - AFTER 7 HOURS.....???

also, this "black ipa" seemed to be more brown than black. and my OG reading was 1.044 compared to 1.068 according to the kit. faulty hydrometer maybe (its the cheap NB hydrometer)??? cant think of anything i screwed up last night.

Was the wort 74F or the yeast? what were the temps of both? The rehydrated yeast should be within 10 degrees of wort temp. It sounds like the yeast got thermal shock & sunk to the bottom. And the low OG measurement could be from not getting the wort & top off water mixed well enough.

Patience. At 7 hours, it's normal for the yeast to still be in the lag phase. As far as the OG reading goes, +1 to unionrdr's suggestion that your top off water probably just didn't mix thoroughly - don't sweat it. As long as you used all the extract and got your water volume correct, your actual OG should be exactly what the kit instructions say.

the wort was 74. i didnt rehydrate the yeast until it was 80 per the instructions. and im sure the temp of the rehydrated yeast only dropped a little bit from there, so im sure the two were not greater than 10 degrees difference.

so what exactly does thermal shock do to the yeast? if that really is the case will they activate over time?

yeah i will definitely give it time. Just threw me off a bit when i saw it on the bottom. thanks guys.

boydster said:

Patience. At 7 hours, it's normal for the yeast to still be in the lag phase. As far as the OG reading goes, +1 to unionrdr's suggestion that your top off water probably just didn't mix thoroughly - don't sweat it. As long as you used all the extract and got your water volume correct, your actual OG should be exactly what the kit instructions say.

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Agreed!

The yeast may be at the bottom now (well not all of them- they are microscopic and so you only see them when there are tons of them, but there are still plenty in suspension) but they know where to find the sugars.

Walk away for at least 24 hours, keeping the beer temperature at 66-68 degrees if at all possible.

It will be fine, I promise!

It could take another day for the yeast to aclimate to the temp of the wort. If the room it's in isn't very warm this time of year,the wort temp should drop to equalize itself a bit more. Tip the fermenter on edge & gently swirl it to get the yeast back in suspension without aerating it. It can take a day to get going again.

and this is the reason i keep coming back to these forums.
always great info and insight. thanks.

I did a NB Dead Ringer IPA a week ago and used the -05 yeast. Tried to rehydrate and it did the same thing. I no activity after about 3 days. I re pitched dry and shook the heck out of the carboy. Checked it the next day and the normal activity was being carried on.

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I'm going to take a wild guess that most of what you saw at the bottom was protein and or hop material settling to the bottom of the carboy, not the yeast.

As for the gravity being so low, did you weigh the ingredients they gave you? Its best to always weigh your dry extract before you start to make sure that you actually have everything and something wasnt accidentally left out of the kit.

If your gravity is really off by .020 then there is missing extract somewhere. Hydrometers as far as i know cant be "broken" and misread, they either work or they dont.