Beginners adventures problems with yeast

Hey everyone,

I looked through this forums but I didn't see any similar question as mine get answered. I am very new to brewing (this is my 2nd try). I have a one gallon kit from for now, so I when I bought the Brewer's Best kit of a milk stout I just subdivided the ingredients out.

I was pretty precise with measuring, except I totally brain farted what I was measuring about. Instead of dividing the ingredients into 1/5, I divided into 1/4. The OG of my wort (without topoff, which added about 8% volume) water was 1.095. Also, I followed the directions on my yeast packet which said to pour the yeast in water and heat it in micro wave, and I over-heated it to about 105. After reading some other posts that's a double no-no I guess.

Its only been an hour, but I haven't seen any fermentation. The yeast was labeled Nottingham Ale Yeast e11 if that helps at all.

I see the most common response to this type of question are just wait and see, but if it fails to ferment what should I do?

Well you are right, one hour is too early to tell anything, but I'd say if there is no activity after 48 hours I'd repitch another pack of yeast. To be perfectly honest I've used Nottingham yeast a bunch an never seen on their packet to heat in a microwave....

Give it some time and report back with updates

It won't fail to ferment....Just take the advice in all those threads and give it time...As the sticky that is quoted in ALL those threads state, it can take up to 3 days for the yeast to start working...and that you shouldn't look for any "Signs of fermentation" except what a hydrometer tells you.

I've never had yeast not work for me...most of the time folks have added more yeast has really been because they were nervous noobs and freaked out and jumped the gun...don't be one of those....yeast in the 21st century doesn't not work these days.

Fermenting is a go. I'll report my FG reading in a few days.

Since this beer is over-concentrated (25% of ingredients for 20% of the volume) would it be okay to dilute it in the bottling stage?

I wouldn't dilute... when the beer is ready for consumption you can mix it with a like style to cut it... I have a batch that is 9% that I mix with my Amber and Red... darkens things up, but balances out the taste.

Yeah, I've found that gently rocking the fermentation bucket helps as well

Been slow on reporting this, but I just opened the first bottle yesterday and it was good, not the best, but definitely beer.

Before I moved load into bottles and added priming sugar the FG reading was 1.035. According to a calculator on the internet that works out to ~8% alcohol by volume and 300 calories.

Thanks again for the tips guys, I should be getting 5 gallon setup in the next week, so I should have some standard-size adventurers soon.

FG of 1.035 is pretty high, Notty's attenuation is right around 75%. You only got about 62% out of it, are you sure this was even done when you bottled? The past few times i've used Notty i've hit 75% or above and that's fermenting at around 64F

iowabrew said:

FG of 1.035 is pretty high, Notty's attenuation is right around 75%. You only got about 62% out of it, are you sure this was even done when you bottled? The past few times i've used Notty i've hit 75% or above and that's fermenting at around 64F

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yeah, but the OP did say his yeast took a swim in a microwave, and his batch was concentrated a bit. that considered, 62% isn't horrible.

True just noticed that

It seemed done fermenting, I took my second reading 2 weeks after the violent bubbling stopped.