Extreme Brewing Brown Ale recipe

Ok, I just got into homebrewing and am on my 3rd batch. The first 2 were from extract kits and went off w/out a hitch. For xmas I got Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing book and decided to make the Beginner's Brown Ale recipe. Everything went fine during the boil. I pitched the liquid yeast (I think it was a White Labs American Ale) in a large pyrex of boiled and cooled water with a few big tablespoons of extract about 5 hours before time to add it to the cooled wort. I got zero activity, NONE. But I pitched it anyway after aerating the wort and aerated again after pitching the yeast.

24 hrs later zero activity still. Unfortunately I did forget to take the OG but ballpark for the recipe was 1070. So the following day I pitched a pack of dry yeast I had rehydrated in warm water for 1/2 hr. The wort took off w/in hrs. So I thought crisis averted. Well, the recipe calls for me to add 10 oz of maple syrup to the fermenter once the OG drops to 1040.

When I checked it a day later it was 1035 so I dissolved the maple syrup in boiled water, let it cool to 75 and stirred it in. After that fermentation completely stopped. Its been 2 days and the SG hasn't changed and haven't had any activity through the airlock. I swirled the fermenter back and forth gently w/out splashing hoping to get the yeast back into suspension but nothing changed. I also moved it from the cool closet at 65* upstairs to 72ish* w/out change. I moved it back to the closet rather than leave it too hot but now I'm wondering if I should pitch more yeast...

Thx in advance.

Post your recipe so we can have an idea how high your OG should have been... You'd think after adding maple syrup, the SG would drop.

On a side note, it sounds like you didn't make your starter correctly. 5-hours isn't sufficient really and you want to use a vessel with an airlock.

jmo88 said:

On a side note, it sounds like you didn't make your starter correctly. 5-hours isn't sufficient really and you want to use a vessel with an airlock.

Click to expand...

Even so the dry yeast picked up the next day shortly after I pitched it. I can't imagine the maple syrup raising the SG too high for the yeast...I can only think I need to pitch more. It couldn't hurt could it?

After swirling the fermenter daily for the past week I finally saw some activity yesterday. Over the past week the SG has dropped from 1035-40 to 1025-30. Guess it'll take a couple weeks to get to the FG so we'll see.