somewhat dopplebock

I brewed up what i call justin's somewhat dopplebock. they didnt have the yeast i wanted to use so i improvised with white labs octoberfest/marzen. set my chaber to 65F ( promash sais to ferment around 68F ), it is now day three since brewday and there is still no sign of fermentation, no change in hydrometer readings. any suggetions?

I'm just a noob so you may want to wait for someone else to chime in but I would carefully re-areate the wort. If you didn't make a starter you may have underpitched which could also cause the lag.

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/strains_wlp820.html

I'm pretty sure 68F is NOT the right temperature to be fermenting this lager yeast at. I'd get it down to around 54F ASAP and hold it there until primary fermentation is done. Lager yeasts take longer to show visible signs of fermentation and you need to pitch much more yeast than you would with an ale.

You need around 700 billion cells for a 1.080 lager. if you pitched a vial you probably have about 80 billion or so. and yeah 65 with that strain will give you a very un-lager like beer.

if you're not going to pitch a massive amount of yeast in the next couple of hours, though, you'll probably want to delay dropping your temp for a while so the yeast can reproduce. this would be the old pre-starters technique for fermenting lagers.

^ im going to go with thegerm on this one. i check the white lab siteand it clearly sais way colder then 68. why did promash give me this calculation?

OBSCZONER said:

^ im going to go with thegerm on this one. i check the white lab siteand it clearly sais way colder then 68. why did promash give me this calculation?

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It must be set up to the default. What does it say in the yeast description of promash? Lagers really need to be made with a HUGE starter and fermented at about 50 degrees.

ok so in the actual yeast inventory it sais to ferment at 55, but my brew session said 68??

and i did use yeast nutrient. does this decrease the risk of underpitching at all? i keep effin forgetting to pitch two vials rather one. and i dont have a stir place so i dont make starters.

OBSCZONER said:

and i did use yeast nutrient. does this decrease the risk of underpitching at all? i keep effin forgetting to pitch two vials rather one. and i dont have a stir place so i dont make starters.

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For a dopplebock, two vials is still underpitching. You'd probably need like 8-10 vials to make up for not making a starter.

You don't need a stir plate for a starter. You mix up 1 cup DME and 4 cups water and boil it. You cool it and then put it in a sanitized jug, add the yeast and then stick a piece of sanitized foil on it. That's for a small starter- you can scale up accordingly.

To see how much yeast should be pitched, check out this pitching rate calculator: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

see i just dont understand it. ive been using one vial or one smack pack for every brew ive ever done and ive had alot of great beers in the range of 6% abv and higher. im going to start making starters since everybody sais to. i have a 1000 ml flask and everything i need. but ive just recently started worrying about underpitching because ive always had great results.

AND, My temp. regulater was a little off. i went out and bought a refridgeration thermometer and my regulater is about ten degrees higher then it sais. i left the brew out of the chamber last night, we average about 50-60 at night time this time of year, went out this morning and there is airlock activity and a nice lager sized top krausen, got my chamber set to about 53F and threw it in there. Think i should be good. any input?

OBSCZONER said:

see i just dont understand it. ive been using one vial or one smack pack for every brew ive ever done and ive had alot of great beers in the range of 6% abv and higher.

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there's been a lot of amateur and professional research on finding the proper yeast pitching rate. like a lot of steps in brewing and cooking, it won't guarantee you'll make good beer, and not doing it won't guarantee you'll make bad beer, but it will influence the chances of a good outcome significantly enough that the vast majority of the best brewers today take the time to do it.

it sounds like your yeast are working. if they stop working before you've reached a reasonable FG, you might want to go pick 2 or 3 dry lager yeast packets from your LHBS, rehydrate them and pitch them.

also yeast nutrient is good, but it's like vitamins, they're no replacement for food.

i have the dopple bock fermenting in my brewshed in the fermenting chamber at 53F, and an ale with WLP090 in my bedroom. i literally cant sleep tonight because im so stressed about temp control.