Not fermenting yet???

Brewing my 1st extract Lager. Brewer's Best, German Oktoberfest(sp).

Cooked it up this past Sunday(8-5-12). Cooled to 50-55. Added water to OG(vigorously). Pitched yeast and stirred for 5+minutes. Capped everything off and added starsan to airlock. Put in ferment-chiller that goes between 53-59(perfect for what instructions say) and let it go.

Everything was sanitized thoroughly so I'm not worried about anything getting in at any time.

Question is, it says 48 hours for ferment to start and even today when I got home from work there is no activity. No bubbles at all. I'm thinking about running and grabbing another packet of yeast to throw in there, but should I just let it go or go ahead and repitch?

Thank in advance.

What yeast did you use?

You are probably fine. Lag times of up 48-72 hours are not uncommon. Don't rely on visual evidence such as airlock activity. Could be your airlock isn't on tight. Could be the lid of your fermenter isn't tight. Remember also, you are fermenting at a cooler temperature, so it won't be as vigorous as you are used to seeing. Wait another 24-48 hours, take a gravity reading. If it hasn't changed at all, then maybe you need to do something. I think you'll find it has gone down a little.

That's kind of what I was planning. I THOUGHT I saw a burp in the airlock earlier and that (sadly) mad me a little happy! I'm busy later tonight and was either going to pitch new yeast before taking off tonight or wait until tomorrow afternoon and check the gravity. Thank you for the quick response. I am leaving it alone until tomorrow.

Checked over the weekend and gravity was still the same. Stopped by LHBS and chatted a bit. He gave me another yeast packet and said that I might want to up the temp to 65ish to help get fermentation started. If after a day or so there was still nothing, then try repitching.

Yesterday when I checked at new temp ............. BUBBLES! haha Going to watch and then get back to adjusting to lower temp.

Thanks again for the help and also to my LHBS.

When I used to brew at a brewpub, I would start my lager in the low 60's for the first 24 hours to kick the yeast into gear, then I'd drop it down to 52.

The other thing you don't mention is how much yeast you pitched. At the lower temperature, you may want to pitch a bit more than you would for an ale.

It's the Brewer's Best German Oktoberfest. Extract brew kit with "Lager" yeast, if I remember correctly. I didn't really look for specifics I just remember "Lager yeast" on the dry packet. I don't have the items yet for doing a starter and reading these forums most say just use the packet and pitch it in per instructions. I am going to be harvesting this yeast and trying my hand at washing etc.

All of my 10+ extracts have come out AWESOME going strictly by the instructions and sanitizing, sanitizing, sanitizing...... I finally got the items needed to "lager" and HAD to try one out. Much more at easy about this one knowing that a 60+deg start may be all that's needed.

Thanks again.

Racked to secondary at gravity of 1.016. I hadn't seen any bubbles in a few days so I checked gravity and was in the range for secondary. I'm going to leave it at the current temp for a day or 6 and recheck and see if the gravity has lowered any. If not then off I will get to the "lagering" part of it. I have 3 other non-lager batches going at present so I can keep busy with them and not worry so much about this one being that it takes different care to get it through to completion. I've also just made the purchase of my first all-grain "bill"(I think it's called) and tomorrow I will be stepping it up and testing the waters of all-grain. Wish me luck.

Lastly, when I transferred to secondary, all I could think was, "That's the weirdest looking trub/yeast cake!" Why did it look so dofferent from all the extract ales that I've done. It looked like the coconut shell media in a "coconut carbon filter". Was definitely different from the ale trub.