I may have screwed this up bad

Ok, so my second brew was an Newcastle clone. However, I brewed it before thanksgiving and had to leave town for thanksgiving. I thought the room would stay roughly 60-65 degrees but it went down to about 50. I'm assuming any yeast left inside are dormant or dead, but I'm not sure what to do here. I'll be taking a hydrometer reading tomorrow to see exactly where it is(it started at 1.070).

My question is, has anyone else done anything similar? will I most likely have to repitch and will this affect the taste in the long run?

thanks.

You shouldn't have to repitch. Yes, your yeast likely went dormant, but if you rouse it and then get it back to the right temps, you will be fine.

I would suggest raising them slow, if that's an option. Wild swings are as bad for yeast as extreme temperatures are.

I agree, slowly raise the temp over like two days, and gently rock the fermenter. Heck, it may be done already if it has been more than three days. You may want to take a hydrometer measurement but your want to wait at least a week before doing anything.

I've been bringing it back up pretty slow(I've gotten it up 8 degrees in 4 hours..and I'll continue at about that rate), but as far as re rousing goes...how exactly would I go about that?

...question answered. rock it to "rerouse" it. I'll be taking the hydrometer reading tomorrow and I'll see for sure.

Col224 said:

I've been bringing it back up pretty slow(I've gotten it up 8 degrees in 4 hours..and I'll continue at about that rate), but as far as re rousing goes...how exactly would I go about that?

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8 degrees should have been done over a whole day. That's a big jump for yeast. Hopefully you're just waking it up and not over-stressing it.

I don't think I ended up screwing it up too bad, when I checked it yesterday it was down to a FG of about 1.013. The OG was 1.060. The only thing I'm still concerned about is if I shocked/killed/made the yeast dormant, will it still be able to carbonate in bottles?

You didn't kill the yeast. You may have shocked them a bit, and pissed em off some, but they're just fine. They're single celled organisms and been here way longer than us, and they're not fragile! You're fine. If you look up yeast washing you'll see one step is to put the yeast in the fridge and that's way cooler than 50º. Take a hydrometer reading and bottle like normal.

EvilTOJ said:

.....You may have shocked them a bit, and pissed em off some.....

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HAHAHA! For some reason I am picturing the yeast sneaking out of the carboy in the middle of the night and taking a dump in his slippers!