So here's the situation.
For my third batch, I wanted to move to liquid yeast. Not quite ready to do a starter yet, so I asked at the local homebrew shop if a Wyeast 1056 smack pack is good enough without a starter. They said yeah, so I brewed as normal and dropped it in. Except I used a Wyeast Starter, not an Activator.
24hrs later I was starting to get nervous. I ran my numbers through the Mr. Malty yeast calculator and came up with 189B cells ideal pitch. The pack I used had 25B. I was low by almost 8 times. The homebrew shop was closed so I couldn't pick up more yeast; I decided to try and cold crash the wort to 10C / 50F to hopefully stop the current yeast from propagating & building up fusel alcohols, and ideally have it flocculate out until I had a chance to pick up more yeast today.
Of course the shop was closed today too, so here I am 56hrs out from pitching with a slowly fermenting batch that appears to be picking up steam. I've raised the temp back up to 20 C / 70 F and I'm going to let it go for the next week and see what happens. This yeast will now have to compensate for both low numbers and a big temperature fluctuation at the start.
I'm expecting a slow ferment that won't attenuate nearly enough, and I'll have to dump this batch. Anyone have any hope for me?
For my third batch, I wanted to move to liquid yeast. Not quite ready to do a starter yet, so I asked at the local homebrew shop if a Wyeast 1056 smack pack is good enough without a starter. They said yeah, so I brewed as normal and dropped it in. Except I used a Wyeast Starter, not an Activator.
24hrs later I was starting to get nervous. I ran my numbers through the Mr. Malty yeast calculator and came up with 189B cells ideal pitch. The pack I used had 25B. I was low by almost 8 times. The homebrew shop was closed so I couldn't pick up more yeast; I decided to try and cold crash the wort to 10C / 50F to hopefully stop the current yeast from propagating & building up fusel alcohols, and ideally have it flocculate out until I had a chance to pick up more yeast today.
Of course the shop was closed today too, so here I am 56hrs out from pitching with a slowly fermenting batch that appears to be picking up steam. I've raised the temp back up to 20 C / 70 F and I'm going to let it go for the next week and see what happens. This yeast will now have to compensate for both low numbers and a big temperature fluctuation at the start.
I'm expecting a slow ferment that won't attenuate nearly enough, and I'll have to dump this batch. Anyone have any hope for me?