Did I freeze my yeast?

[Mantis78]

I transferred my beer to a 5 gallon glass carboy secondary fermenter on Saturday. On Monday afternoon my furnace that heats my house quit and the temperature in the house dropped (slowly) down to about 50 degrees before the furnace started working again Tuesday afternoon. I am attempting to brew an imperial IPA. The 'activity' on the surface of the beer has subsided and sediment has fallen to the bottom of the carboy. I am seeing little bubbling in the airlock.

Is my yeast dead? Is there anything I can do to revive it? Should I even care since it was in a primary for a week before transferring it to the secondary?

 

[MotorcycleMatt]

Bring it back up to temp, maybe gently stir it a little to get the yeast back up into the beer. They just went dormant at that temp

 

[Doomsday]

my thoughts exactly Matt.

I was a little worried with my last batch. Had my 2 smack packs sitting in my fridge between brew days. They must have been sitting in there in the back, untouched for 2-3 weeks. When I got them out they were slightly FROZEN! I was pissed but went ahead and thawed them out and smacked them to activate, let them sit for over 24 hours to get the yeast nice and active. Pitched them and they went to town right away, no problems thus far.

 

[Mcsuck]

There really shouldn't be any "activity" anyway in secondary unless more fermentables are being added. It really is more of an optional clearing step or used for something like dry hopping (which I am assuming you are doing with an IIPA). Yeast are very hearty organisms and will not come close to dying at 50F, however they will fall out of suspension more rapidly at that temp. But unless you transferred before fermentation was over, I wouldn't worry one iota about this.