1st brew sat. brown ale and light ale

got everything keg kit,went all out

making a nut brown ale from northern brewing and a light ale that came with my kit from more beer. Using wyeast smack pack for brown, dry yeast for ale.

question: wyeast says smack and set out for 3- 5 hours can it set out longer like 8 hrs. I want to brew 1st thing in the morning but don't want to wake up at 3 am to smack my yeast. I

'll try to update sat nite. we'll see how it goes

As for the light ale i didn't realize i had to put the dry yeast in the fridg till 4 days later. So if my yeast dosen't take i'll only b making 1 brew sat.

Waking up at three am is a small sacrafice to the beer gods. Good luck

The smack pack liquid yeast really should be used with a starter. If you don't know what a yeast starter is, just do a quick search here on HBT, and you'll find more than you ever needed to know. What this will allow you to do is get your yeast ready to go days before hand, then just take it out of the fridge an hour or so before you want to pitch it. It will also test the viability of your yeast, make sure they are healthy (which, with proper care, shouldn't be a problem). The only issue here, is if this is your first batch, it is an added step, and added complexity that you may not want to deal with until you have a brew under your belt.

The purpose of the smack pack is really just to show you if your yeast are ready to do their thing. If after 3-5 hours, you don't have any expansion in the smack pack, then you know there might be a problem. In theory, you could just open up the smack pack, without smacking it, and use it (but smacking it does provide some nutrients). So, there really is no reason why you couldn't just smack it, mix it up, open it right away, and dump into your wort (preferably your starter wort).

As for the dry yeast, you could make a starter tonight to test and make sure the yeast is safe. Usually starters aren't recommended for dry yeast, but if you have strong reason to believe your yeast might be dead or weak, you may consider it, but I wouldn't think there would be any problem with it after 4 days, I think you should be fine.

i do plan on making a starter but prob not for the 1st brew. plus i don't have any dry malt extract hangin around unless i steal it from the kit.

had trouble with smack pack thought i pooped it 3 times but didin't, but now i no for next time.

made mistake of not adding stepping grains before i had the water boiling. So i had to cool water down then start over. I think i left them steep too hot cuz they steeped from 140 degree to 180 for 10 min. and the grains looked a lil dark. Directions said steep for 20 min. or 170 degree. That was the nut brown no problems after that.

only prob with the light ale is i added the hops for the 60 min boil b4 i put in the DME i don't think it was a big deal. They were only 1 step out of order Also when i poured the beer into the fermenter is was really heady. it was so foamy some came out the top. The brown ale wasn't like that

Both a fermenting now in the basement at 70 degree. gravity readings were 1.050 for the brown and 1.038 for the light ale. dry yeast went pretty well. give an update in a day or 2