imperial A04 Barbarian Organic Vermont ale yeast lag?

[WhoDatDad78]

I brewed a heady topper clone yesterday. Pitched this yeast around 7PM yesterday after hitting the wort with oxygen (it's 8:30 ish the following day). I have zero activity in the carboy. Has anyone else had issues with this yeast lagging? I have a baggy of us05 ready to pitch if need be, I just don't want to knee jerk this one since the profile is so specific.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Relax, be patient. ~12hrs is nothing to be worried about. A few questions that are helpful regarding lag time...

Date on package? How many did you pitch?
Did you make a starter? How big?
Wort/pitch temp?
What temp is it sitting at now?
What volume of wort?
At what gravity?

Don't jerk that knee.

 

[WhoDatDad78]

Relax, be patient. ~12hrs is nothing to be worried about. A few questions that are helpful regarding lag time...

Date on package? May something, I tossed the package after pitching.
How many did you pitch? 1, I read that underpitching for that strain was beneficial for esters and such.
Did you make a starter? How big? No starter, I like to mistreat my yeast.
Wort/pitch temp? ~65F, new cfc kicked arse in under 5 mins!
What temp is it sitting at now? ~70F
What volume of wort? 6.5gal
At what gravity? 1.072

Don't jerk that knee.

 

[DBhomebrew]

6.5g at 1.072 might be a bit much for one package, but May-something is pretty recent and Imperial starts at a healthy 200B. It's an underpitch indeed, but I'd ride it out. I'd be surprised if you didn't see activity tomorrow morning.

Keep the 05 in the fridge for now.

 

[WhoDatDad78]

6.5g at 1.072 might be a bit much for one package, but May-something is pretty recent and Imperial starts at a healthy 200B. It's an underpitch indeed, but I'd ride it out. I'd be surprised if you didn't see activity tomorrow morning.

Keep the 05 in the fridge for now.

Fingers crossed, the recipe was from homebrewsupply.com and didn't say anything about a starter, plus I wanted the stone fruit profile. So hopefully this takes off.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Recipes are generally very basic guidelines for the creation of wort. Yeast handling, fermentation protocol, packaging, etc, etc, are pretty much up to the brewer to develop their own procedures.

For example, many older recipes will call for a secondary but the homebrew hive mind no longer considers one necessary or beneficial in most cases.

FWIW, running your wort volume and gravity through Imperial's yeast pitch calculator with a May 3 manufacturing date gives a recommended pitch of 1.5-7 packs. I really do think it'll be fine.

Next time, you may consider pitching a fresh pack into a ~1.04 easy drinker. The slurry from that can easily ferment 2-3 batches of something bigger. I've now brewed five batches on one pack of Pub. I've got another 1/2c in the fridge that I'll use to brew another small beer and save its yeast cake for another generation of 2-3 batches.