HELP with wyeast cal lager 2112

[actionjackson905]

This is my first time using a lager yeast, pitched it on Friday/Sat morning at about 3am at about 70 deg, and have maintained that temp, without any movement up to now (Tues Sept 8 10:30 am).

Q1: Should I be more patient?
Q2: Should I drop the temp to the bottom end of the range (65)?
Q3: Can I re aerate the wort to get it going, or should I?

I will have room in my chamber tonight when I will remove an ale and be able to drop the chamber temp down for lagering.


AJ

 

[giraffe]

70 is a little high to pitch the cal lager. I pitch at 60-62 and hold that through most of fermentation, letting it rise to 68 when fermentation is 80% complete or so. 70 is out of its range.

Lager yeast require larger starters, and dont form full krausens as much. You may have underpitched and have a long lag time.

 

[jeneliz]

Though the Cali lager yeast works at ale temps, I would recommend taking the temperature down a bit. When I use this yeast, I maintain around 64-66F, which is still pretty high. Even with this, I don't start to see any action until 13 hours or so.

Anyways, to answer your questions:

A1: Definitely be patient! +1 to giraffe - lagers need yeast starters and without them they tend to take a moment to start off. Lagers in general take a while to get going. You may already be noticing some action now!

A2. I would slowly bring it down to fermentation temp.

A3. I would not aerate it... Though I'm not super positive on this subject, I don't think you're supposed to aerate after you have pitched the yeast.

Also, I most recently pitched a room temperature starter to 80F wort... after 12 hours and about a 15F temperature drop, that yeast was crazy active! I have actually never had a lager foam out the top until this one... so you may also want to watch out for that if you don't have too much head space in your fermenter.

 

[actionjackson905]

Ok. Thanks a bunch to you both. I have realized that I made a couple of errors.

1. The temps on the bag refer to the pitch temps, not the frem temps.
2. The yeast and activator are in one bag, and you squeeze the bag to break the internal bladder to release one into the other, then let sit for 3 hrs. I may not have let it sit long enough.
3. Don't brew until 3am with neighbors keeping you company, this causes lack of focus and inability to read directions and instructions. ;-P

I am going to try to drop the temps down slowly tonight starting at the top of the recommended ferm temp range (as recommended by Wyeast on their site).

I'll keep you updated as I progress.

Hopefully I can recover this batch!


AJ


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[actionjackson905]

Ok. Some good news... Some 90 hours after pitching, fermentation has started none the less I have my garage fridge now hooked up to the STC - 1000 and everything is working, so I moved the primary to the fridge and set it for 20 and will drop the tem down to 16 over the next few days.

Anyone who is interested I have attached photos of the 2 hour job. with the primary safely in its new home for the next 14 days.

Thanks again to Jeneliz and Giraffe for helping out!


AJ

BTW, I added a circulation fan to the fridge at a cost of about $10

 

[jeneliz]

Looks good! :rockin: Rock on sir.

 

[actionjackson905]

Brew finished Friday night. Pulled the first pint and looks good. Taste is not quite what I expected, a bit more tart and malty than I wanted but the tartness probably comes from the California yeast. All said nice first lager, crisp and clear!!