Pitched a ton of yeast - no signs after 12 hrs?

I brewed an Irish Red Ale this morning. The yeast I used has been washed and used twice before - this was the third batch I'd used it on. It's the Wyeast Irish Ale 1084. The last batch I used it on, I washed and recovered the entire yeast cake (approximately 2 full cups of slurry). That was on Dec. 19. I stored the washed yeast in my fridge. Today, I gave it 4 hours to warm to room temperature, then pitched the entire 2 cups of yeast slurry, expecting a ferocious fermentation. However, that was 12 hours ago, and so far, I don't have any signes of fermentation (some bubbles in the carboy, probably residual from aeration - no bubbling in the pail the blowoff tube leads to). O.G. was 1.041.

Can it take longer than 12 hours for big batch (2 cups) of 3-rd generation yeast slurry to kick off fermentation? If I don't see anything by tomorrow night (36 hours), I'll rehydrate and pitch some US-05, but I'd really love for this Irish Ale yeast to take off. Is there still hope?

There is hope for up to 72 hours. Hold off on "fixing" things. Probably would have been better to do a starter to wake the yeast up. Likely that is what is taking a while. The yeast are just now waking up and starting to work. Tomorrow morning it will probably be bubbling away. What temp are you at?

I've got the carboy covered in a wet t-shirt, sitting in a rope tub full of water, with 2 bottles of ice in it, being changed every 12 hours. Ambient room temp is around 70 F.

Is your carboy sitting in ice water or am I reading that wrong?

Next time don't allow temperature of wort to warm up, pitch few degrees lower and let it rise to fermentation temperature. This way you will get controlled yeast growth without producing off flavors like diacetyl, esters..

As for fermentation, 12 hrs is still to early for serious conclusion, it can take up to 72 hours before signs of fermentation. Try to keep temperature under 70F and don't do anything before taking gravity reading.

agreed with dis and the others.

A slurry that is a few weeks old will have depleted glycogen reserves so the cell permeability will be low making for a slow start to fermentation. You probably pitched 200-500 billion cells, so I be it will be going like a rocket ship once it does get going. It might even finish the bulk of the fermentation in 12 hours once it is moving.

Here is a graph of typical fermentation:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/12/yeast-cell-growth-observations.html

Hey all,

How do I save my yeast cake from my brown ale, wash and store it? What is the process by which this is done?

BrewMasta said:

Hey all,

How do I save my yeast cake from my brown ale, wash and store it? What is the process by which this is done?

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Just pour it into sanitized quart sized mason jars and put it in the fridge. Each one will have 400 billion to 2 trillion cells.

Washing just pours 95% of the viable cells down the drain. See here for details:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/12/yeast-washing-exposed.html

And more recently:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/yeast-washing-revisited.html

the_trout said:

Is your carboy sitting in ice water or am I reading that wrong?

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If this is true, you may be at a pretty low temp. A slow start may be due to this.

Can you read the temp somehow? In a 70F room, maybe take the ice out of the bath??

Cheers

CryoEng said:

If this is true, you may be at a pretty low temp. A slow start may be due to this.

Can you read the temp somehow? In a 70F room, maybe take the ice out of the bath??

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Yes, I did indeed have the carboy in basically a bath of ice water. In the past, I've pitched rehydrated dry yeast or a yeast starter under these circumstances successfully, but now that I think about it, those fermentations probably started up in time before the cold water cooled the wort too much, so the fermentation generated enough heat to keep its temperature in the optimal range. But repitching this washed yeast probably lead to a slow start, which allowed the ice water to cool the wort too low to really let fermentation get going and generate the additional 5-10 degrees of internal temperature increase.

I've taken the ice out of the water (after about 12 hours), so it should be slowly warming up to room temperature. I'll give it another day or so to see if it really gets going.

Maybe I missed it in the thread, but what yeast are you using?


To estimate your fermentation temperature over time with ice in a swap cooler see this:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/09/swamp-cooler.html

WoodlandBrew said:

Maybe I missed it in the thread, but what yeast are you using?

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Wyeast Irish Ale 1084, washed and re-used twice (this is the third batch it's been used on).

Saw some signs of life this morning. The larger bubbles (lingering from aeration) have dissipated, and I now have small patches of much smaller (presumably CO2) bubbles at the top. Also, the blowoff tube has finally started to blow the occassional bubble in the pail of StarSan. Not much yet, but at least it's evidence that something is happening.

I removed the ice from the water bath on Sunday morning (after 24 hours of nothing), and I think tonight I'll likely remove most of the water, too, and let it warm up a little more still. At least until it really gets going, anyway.

That's good there are signs of life. Before you go to the trouble of removing water from the bath you might want to check the water temperature. In my experience it will climb to room temperature 12 hours after ice has been added. You'll get a cleaner profile if you ferment near 62 (low end of the yeast) and it will me more fruity near 72, and likely have a green apple flavor if you are near or above 72. If it were me I would let the yeast progress at it's own pace and try to keep it closer to the low end. Although I wouldn't use more than 1 frozen gallon of water every 12 hours in a 5 gallon water bath. The fast temperature drop might send some yeast toward dormancy.

I think pulling the ice was smart but Id let it ride at this point and leave the water. Like Woodland said, Id be aiming for a water bath in the lower 60s. I like to achive this with cool/cold water but I feel like the ice is overkill. If you can rig a thermometer in your swamp cooler to monitor the temp and go for multiple small infusions of hot or cold water as needed as opposed to large infusions of ice which can swing your temps out of range quickly. I think your going to be fine at this point.

Thanks Woodland and Trout - I'm going to take your advice and leave it as-is, in the water, and see what happens. I'll check it again tonight when I get home from work.

Well, good news, I checked it last night, and it's come to life. There's a frothy inch-thick krausen on top, and the blowoff tube was bubbling twice per second. I checked again this morning, and it's bubbling three times per second. I took the temperature of the water bath the carboy is sitting in, and it's at 63.5 F. Looks like in another week or so, I'll have beer. Thanks for the advice, guys.

Bubbling has slowed to once every second or two, and the kausen is now gone. The top of the beer is just a few islands of errant CO2 bubbles. Temperature of the water bath has risen to 64.5 F.

I was worried this one might produce a krausen that overflowed the carboy, but it never actually grew thicker than 2 inches or so. I'm excited to try this batch!

Subscribing because I want some of woodland's links.

looneybomber said:

Subscribing because I want some of woodland's links.

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Thanks!
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