Lager fermenting question

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Jimbo_beer

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Hi,

I brewed my first lager. I know lagers take a few days before you can see any kind of action. I pitched my yeast on Monday morning but still haven't seen any action. Should I be worried?
Pitched white labs, at the temperature the recipe suggested. Just a bit concerned.

Thank you in advance,

Jim
 
I usually see activity within 24 hours with lagers. I only have limited experience though with one yeast WLP 833 fermenting at 50F

You need a lot of yeast for a lager.

Current lager is just about at FG now 11 days after pitching the yeast.

What yeast strain are you using

What was your pitch rate

What temperature did you pitch at

What temperature are you fermenting at

What's the OG of the beer

Knowing these things may shed some light on your conundrum.

I would be concerned enough to get more yeast in there pronto
 
its a bit worrying that you havent seen anything by today, thats about 72+ hours. at this point you have about 3 options.

1- raise the temp 5-10 degrees until you see signs of activity and then gently lower back to fermentation temp.
2- get some more yeast and pitch it in
3- toss it out and try again this weekend.

typically one white labs vial/wyeast pack/etc is fine for ales, but you want to do two vials for lager. or alot of folks make a starter from one vial to increase yeast count, and then pitch the starter. but---if the vial you bought was old, the numbers dont hold up. let's say it may have only been 50% viable, (~half live yeast, half dead) so really you might have only pitched 25% of recommended amount. (~2 100% live vials) see the problem? it can get out of hand quickly when doing lagers.

a good free site to use is brewer's friend, there's a good yeast calculator that will let you know how viable/old the vial you have is, how big of a starter to make based on your starting gravity, batch size, etc.

lastly, alot of folks pitch lager yeast into a warm wort of ~60F to 65F or so. then once you see activity (bubbles in airlock, little clumps of yeasty foam floating on top of wort, etc) then you can lower it gently down to fermentation temp. dr white (whitelabs) states that ester formation is in the none-to-negligible range for the first 12 hours, so it shouldnt affect taste. but as you'll see from reading on this forum, lager brewers love to debate this fact.

some lager yeasts dont mind the warm start, some give off alot of esters. sometimes its affects flavor, sometimes no. you'll just have to brew and drink a lot of lager to be able to come to your own conclusions.

Enjoy.
 
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