Need help from you lagerers

[echosierra1]

On monday I started my mr beer lagers, a Mexican and an American lager that I added a little blue berry to. I used the wyeast bohemian for the Mexican lager and wyeast American for the American lager. The Mexican batch kicked off as expected though a little on the weak side. The blue berry American i think is dead. It been 72 hrs so I think I'll repitch the same strain of yeast. Thoughts on that?
Also I was wondering if my processes killed it before. So this time I was think ing of smacking the pack while it's cold form the brew store fridge. Then pitting in the fermenter with the two batches until it swells then pitch it. My thinking was to keep from shocking it. Or should I let the American. Batch warm to room temp with the smack pack and pitch it then?
I know......... I'm over my head probably with doing lagers on my third batch but I'm hard headed. thanks all. Be easy on me

 

[Yooper]

I always pitch my lagers cold and keep them cool until the diacteyl rest. I ferment lagers at 50 degrees, and I pitch them just a couple of degrees cooler and let them warm up to 50 degrees. That works out really well.

A Mr. Beer is about 2 gallons, isn't it? If so, one package is really not quite enough. If you're not making a starter, 2 packages would be the correct amount of yeast to pitch.

I wouldn't mess around with raising and then lowering the temperature, because in a 2 gallon batch the bulk of fermentation could be over before you can cool it down to the proper temperature. (I wouldn't do it with a 5 gallon batch either, though!).

 

[echosierra1]

Perfect response thanks for the help.