First lager attempt pitching method??

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twobrosbrewin

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First time to brew a lager.... and a couple of questions have arisen.
The yeast(Wyeast Bavarian Lager) smelled funny(bad) when opened and the pack didn't really swell like previous ones. I had heard that some lager yeasts produce an odor usually sulfurous so I didn't really sweat the smell.
Its been four days since pitching and no activity except for a mild fluctuation between positive and negative pressure in the airlock. I think this could be due to temp change in the fridge and from me opening and shutting the door to check it.
Anyways I was curious if I need to take any further steps or just keep waiting... this is my first lager so I'm not really sure what to expect from the fermentation.
I plan on taking a hydro reading on Fri. and I was also thinking about ordering another batch of yeast and pitching it as well.
Essential details:
Yeast- Wyeast Bavarian
Wort- NB Bock Extract Kit
OG- 1.056 room temp
Procedure- Smacked the yeast pack 4 hours before, cooled wort to around 60F, pitched straight from yeast pack(no starter), placed in fridge at 46F, raised temp in fridge slowly over next couple of days to 50F.

EDIT- Repost from beginners section, hoping to get some feedback before I leave work. Thanks.
 
Yep... shoulda made a starter. ;) And, I hope you aerated well. If not, you may want to aerate again so the yeast cells can reproduce to sufficient quantities to do the job.

I pitched a 2L starter of WLP830 and had a 8 hour lag time. At the same time I pitched two packets of dry lager yeast (about 4-5x as many cells as you pitched!) into another batch, and had 2 1/2 days of lag on that one. Both were hit with 1 minute of pure O2 using a stone.
 
Yep... shoulda made a starter. ;) And, I hope you aerated well. If not, you may want to aerate again so the yeast cells can reproduce to sufficient quantities to do the job.

I pitched a 2L starter of WLP830 and had a 8 hour lag time. At the same time I pitched two packets of dry lager yeast (about 4-5x as many cells as you pitched!) into another batch, and had 2 1/2 days of lag on that one. Both were hit with 1 minute of pure O2 using a stone.

I don't have a stone to use, is there another method. Could I just shake the hell out of it? Also, I'm not sure that's the problem because I only did a partial boil and ran the wort through a strainer/funnel combo. I've just read so many different possibilities of things that could go wrong that I was wondering if repitching would be the quickest fix or just wait it out.....
 
Wouldn't hurt to pitch more. But eventually it will probably take off. Giving the carboy a shake will probably help, if nothing else it will get the yeast which have settled to the bottom back up with access to nutrients so they can bud and get to work with fermentation.
 
stand by for the barrage of "you should've made a starter" responses...

Yeah, that's right.
You are going to have a poor fermentation run on this brew with likely a long fermentation followed by poor attenuation ( good attenuation really needed for the crisp flavour that a lager has ) possibly a stuck ferment and diacetyl and other flavour issues.

If you didn't want to make a starter, you could have pitched 4 or 5 smack packs instead.

Try pitching a pack of rehydrated/climatized dry lager yeast to get the sucker going.

BTW try NOT to add any more o2 to your wort now that it has been so long. The extra o2 now would promote staling of your beer faster.
 
Yeah, that's right.
You are going to have a poor fermentation run on this brew with likely a long fermentation followed by poor attenuation ( good attenuation really needed for the crisp flavour that a lager has ) possibly a stuck ferment and diacetyl and other flavour issues.

If you didn't want to make a starter, you could have pitched 4 or 5 smack packs instead.

Try pitching a pack of rehydrated/climatized dry lager yeast to get the sucker going.

BTW try NOT to add any more o2 to your wort now that it has been so long. The extra o2 now would promote staling of your beer faster.

I really didn't research the starter advantages enough and because me and my brother never had any problems with the ales. Next time I will make a starter.

When you say "climatized"; is this just chilling the starter to the same temp and the wort to avoid shock? Also at what point would we start chilling the starter?

Too late for the O2, shook the fermenter up last night... oh well. Relax and.....

I'm starting to think I should get another carboy and run the same kit with some procedural modifications and compare the outcome. :mug:
 
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