Oops.. Should I cut my losses and start over?

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Cytosol

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Hi All,

I have done about 5 brews with the beer-in-a-bag ingredients and had some pretty decent results. Yesterday I went out and purchased a Coopers Wheat Beer kit, which is a 1.5kg can of concentrate, along with yeast and got some malt extract and sugar and all that good stuff. The store owner sold me a $3 package of some 'other' yeast that is supposed to be great for wheat bears.. great!

I followed the instructions carefully, did a great job on everything.. EXCEPT.. I didn't read the instructions on the bag of yeast that was sold to me separetely; it needed to be suspended in warm water before added to the wort. I just threw it in like I have always done with the beer-in-a-bag kits.

Now this morning, I checked the beer and saw that it wasn't fermenting at all. This led me to read the thrown-out package of yeast and figured out what was going on. In a panic, I threw in the other bag of yeast that came with the coopers malt extract in hopes of saving this batch.

Should I just pour this out and start again? is it too far gone, even with adding the other bag of yeast? The wort was sitting there for about 16 hours not fermenting before I threw in the second bag of yeast. I understand it is crucial that the yeast be added as soon as possible, so I am affraid that it might be too late..

Suggestions?

Thanks!
 
Slow your roll there. You have to give the yeast time to do their gig. They don't all start within a couple hours, it could take a couple days. And some yeast you don't really see anything happen, but it does.

There shouldn't be a problem with not hydrating your dry yeast, I sprinkle it on the wort all the time. As long as the wort wasn't too hot when you pitched it, it will most likely be okay.

Don't pour it out.... relax. It should be okay.
 
Thanks for the reply! I thought this yeast wouldn't be able to activate if it wasn't first put in warm water.. But maybe it just takes longer to get started then?

The wort was around 25 degrees C, so I think it was a good temperature.

Now my second question; did I wreck anything by putting that second bag in? I guess it doesn't really matter how much yeast is in there, since it all pretty much dies off when the sugar is gone, right?
 
RDWHAHB, should be fine.

If you don't see fermentation in three full days it may be time to contemplate thinking about worrying .. just a little bit.
 
Rehydrating the yeast is just recommended practice so that the yeast start off under the least amount of stress. Just because you didn't do it doesn't mean the yeast are dead or not able to ferment the beer. Did you take a gravity reading at all to check to see if fermentation was taking place? If not, I would just back away and leave the beer alone.

Having another packet of yeast in there will only make a difference in the flavor profile, in that you will be getting a mix of the two strains. It will probably be a subtle difference from what it would have tasted like with just the one strain in there. Still, nothing is messed up.
 
agreed with other comments. Re-hydrating is ideal, but you'll still get good beer without it.

And yes, cool your boots. Give it a few days to let the yeast wake up, get settled, and go to work. If you don't see anything happening after 3-4 days, don't just dump it. At that point, there may have been an issue with the yeast. How do you fix that? Add more yeast. If on day 4, there is still no activity, get another pack of yeastg, rehydrate it properly, and pitch that.

Don't just straight to dumping a batch. I almost dumped a batch, and after giving it time, turned out to be the best batch I've made to-date.
 
Please, get the words "Dumping Beer" out of your mindset.....

Since nothing pathogenic can grow in beer, that's a really silly worry and would be a waste of potentially excellent beer.

That's why I've been collecting success stories like this, to hopefully teach you overly worried new brewers the folly of your ways.


Most of the time a new brewer (and it's usually new brewers who do) is because they think something like that, though, and are actually tasting their beer usually when it is really green. Or they make a mistake and because of all the worst case scenarions they've come upon in books, they dump it thinking in their naievty that their beer will instantly go bad.

I wrote this awhile ago...it should be committed to memory...

You don't dump your beer, for making a minor little mistake. Your beer is hardier than that.

And you don't dump something because you think it's going to turn out bad. You only dump a beer that you KNOW is bad, and you give it at least a couple of months in the bottle before you even make THAT decision.

Read theses two threads that were compiled for nervous new brewers to realize that your beers are not a weak baby that is going to die if you look at it wrong.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Our beer is really resilient despite the boneheaded things we do to it. And even if something appears to be wrong, often time and the yeasties go along way to correct itself.

And if everyone dumped their beer just because of a common thing like an airlock suckback, no one would be brewing. We ALL have had sanitizer from our airlock get into our beer at one time or another. There's a ton of panic threads on here about that, and the answer is always the same, RELAX.

I think about it in terms of my time and money, I'm not going to dump 30 or more dollars worth of ingredients, 6 hours of brewing time, and at least 2 months from yeast pitch to cracking the first bottle, on what could be a minor mistake (that may not even harm the beer anyway,) until I have exhausted all probability that the beer won't improve. And even then that means at least walking away from the bottles for maybe 6 months or more.

And so far I have never beer wrong.

After all these years of brewing I still haven't had a dumper.

And I've made some big mistakes.

But I have never had a beer that wasn't at least palatable, after all that time.

They may have not been stellar beers, but they were still better than BMC or Skunky Beers in green bottles that people actually pay money for.

So just read those threads and next time, relax, and give your beer a chance to prove how strong it really is.

:mug:
Click to expand...


Read these stories while you relax...And especially erase the words "Should I dump this" from your thought process....
 
I've sampled a barley wine that was huge...it tasted like crap after being a couple years old and by an experienced brewer he almost dumped it...it sat another 1.5 years and was 100000000% better....
 
Thanks for putting my mind at ease, guys! I will let it sit and do it's thing; I did a really good job with this brew; spent a lot of time, made a nice orange / coriander extract to add to it! Lets hope it turns out well.

I vow to never dump a batch unless I accidentally pour some sort of poisonous chemical into it.. Or if I find out my dog got into it.
 
I just did my first Coopers all-syrup kit last night (normally do extract/hops/steeping grains kits). On the instructions it said it was fine to sprinkle directly on the finished wort. They said yeast pitched into cold wort may once in a rare while be 'cold-shocked' where it may start fermentation slowly or possibly not at all. This would not wreck anything either. I cant believe how many thread there are like this hehehehe!
 
I didn't actually use the same yeast that came with the kit; I used another one that the store sold me. That one, I found out needed to be floated in warm water beforehand.

I guess I wasn't used to the cooper kits. The beer-in-a-bag kits I used before would ferment vigorously and immediately after I pitched the yeast. The morning after usually yielded about 10 inches of foam, so thats when I thought something was up after seeing absolutely no foam forming.
 
I had a very similar experience (I think all new brewers do). I started searching the forum to see if I should also cut my losses and dump the beer. I found the answer here on this forum and it goes like this....RELAX AND BREW ANOTHER BATCH. That is what I did to keep my mind off the first batch.

That first batch, by the way turned out really good. I started drinking it way too green but also learned that as beer ages it gets way better.

My greatest task now is something else that I learned here. I am brewing every weekend to build a pipeline of beer:rockin:

Now I'm way too busy to watch my fermenter:D

Eric
 
I fail to see how dumping a batch, even if it's messed up, could be considered "cutting your losses." You're taking a partial loss and turning it into a complete loss. What losses are you preventing by doing this? :rolleyes:
 
The reason that some dry yeast manufacturers instruct you to rehydrate the yeast with warm water has something to do with the cell walls of the dry yeast not consistently returning to normal when rehydrated in wort. Apparently it results in a certain percentage of nonviable cells. Other brands of dry yeast that instruct you to just dump the yeast on top may have been processed in a way that makes rehydration in warm water unnecessary. It's best to follow the yeast manufacturer's instructions. Most of the yeast manufacturer's websites will have more detailed info.

Your beer is gonna be great, man!
 
Yea I have never re hydrated my yeast and have not had any problems. Sometimes it just takes a little longer to get started but if its dry yeast you can always just sprinkle it on and let it go.

cheers
 

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