I assumed it was fine which makes me an %$#

[fatherdan]

Brewed 10 gallons of Octoberfast ALE on Saturday.

Nothing special, everything went fine. Was short on time and used two smack packs on an irish ale and one a german ale yeast.

No starters, just the smack packs. split batch. one packet each.

Just assumed everything was fine. Put in in my fermentation chamber(fridge with temp control)

Looked at it last night for the first time and realized one batch has zero activity. Looked at yeast date and it said April 2016.

So realistically were looking at 120 hours in a bucket at 66 degrees with no yeast....can I salvage this? by adding yeast and aerating it again or do I cut my losses on the second 5 gallons.

Thanks

 

[atom]

best by date or packaged on date? I'd pitch more yeast before i'd dump 5 gallons of beer.

 

[firerat]

Give it another day or so, take a gravity reading, and if there indeed was no activity, pitch some more yeast.

As long as your sanitation game is good, you should be fine.

 

[Simonh82]

120 hours in, it seems pretty unlikely it's suddenly going to take off. I'd pitch more yeast but also take a gravity sample at the same time.

If it hasn't moved you know for sure the other yeast was dead, it also gives you a chance to taste it and see if it has gone sour.

Did the smack pack swell when you smacked it?

 

[kh54s10]

120 hours and no activity. Not likely that you will get any now. Check the gravity and if it hasn't moved much, aerate then pitch more yeast. If the gravity has moved a bunch you would not want to aerate. You should probably use 2 or 3 packs.

 

[fatherdan]

Thanks

im very confident in my sanitation methods. i'll pick up some us-05 and use it if the gravity hasn't changed. It'll be interesting to see if my sanitation is as good as I think it is

 

[fatherdan]

120 hours in, it seems pretty unlikely it's suddenly going to take off. I'd pitch more yeast but also take a gravity sample at the same time.

If it hasn't moved you know for sure the other yeast was dead, it also gives you a chance to taste it and see if it has gone sour.

Did the smack pack swell when you smacked it?

Nope. It was a last minute brew and I smacked it about 2 hours prior to pitching it. Long story...very hot brew day. was close to 90 degres out....

 

[oceanic_brew]

I pitched two old mason jars of slurry into a dopplebock, the yeast came out of a dopplebock that I made before I understood pitching rates and oxygen necessities. So in short it was two low viability possibly low Heath yeast slurries.

It took five days and then i noticed activity and a drop in Gravity.

Ive read many cases where if something takes off after that long it's usually an infection but In this case I was fine.

Unfortunately you aren't using lager yeast so 5 days at room temp is a whole other ball game. Take a gravity reading and take the recommendation of some dry yeast.

If you do have fermentation It's likely you'll have some off flavors if the yeast has such a long lag phase.

 

[fatherdan]

Well ill be damned....opened the fermentor to take a peak and gravity sample and sure enough there was activity...it was at 1030 started at 1054.

I had a slurry from a cali common ready to go so I dumped it in anyways.

who knows??my guess is it will be fine.

Thanks