No bubbling in airlock

[loz114]

I made a batch last night and have a horrible feeling I pitched the yeast too early and killed it with the heat in the fermentation tank. This morning I had no activity in my airlock when normally by now it's going crazy!?! Shall I wait, pitch more yeast, or what?!?!

 

[SilverZero]

Wait. Give it a couple of days. At what temp did you pitch?

 

[unionrdr]

Good question. Did you chill the wort at all?

 

[loz114]

I chilled the wort, pitched it at around 40c I suppose, slightly warmer then usual....

 

[JohnnyNeurotic]

I've heard stories of people pitching as high as 43C (110F) and not killing the yeast. You shocked the hell out of it, but it probably isn't dead.

What Silver said... just wait. Yeast has a way of surprising you. If it isn't active in another 48 hrs I would guess you're in trouble!

Lesson learned, eh?

 

[unionrdr]

You def pitched on the hot side. 40C is about 104F. You should pitch at about 70F,or about 22C. 20C,or 68F,would be even better ime. You stressed the yeast,likely killed off some of them. Let it cool down & see if they recover & start the reproductive phase again. They do this before physical fermentation can be seen. Although the yeast will likely settle. So they may need to be gently roused back into suspension. Just don't be rough & foam it up at all. That would introduce o2 which may not be a very good idea at this point.

 

[kh54s10]

104F That is very hot but not hot enough to kill the yeast AFAIK. If you did not get the temperature down quickly after pitching you are going to end up with a lot of off flavors.

It is really too early do think there is a problem, although at that temperature I would have thought you would get fermentation sooner than expected.

 

[unionrdr]

I said that it might kill some of them. This has happened to me,since the weaker ones would die off,leaving the stronger behind. It seems so when I roused all the yeast back into suspension,& only about half stayed in suspension to start the job again. The dead become food for the living in the yeast world.
And at that temp,fermentation wouldn't start faster necessarilly. Sometimes it might. But on average,it stalls it until conditions improve. Then rousing them will get the job going again. But not necessarilly as well as it would've been. In cases like this,I gave at least an additional week for it to clean up after itself once FG is finally reached. It cleans up at the point where it's setling out clear.

 

[loz114]

Yea defo learnt a lesson here, but say there is no activity in the next 48hrs, is it as simple as putting new yeast into the fermenter or what's the normal procedure?

 

[unionrdr]

When mine didn't start in the 1st 24 hours,I saw it'd settled out. I roused it back into suspension again. I had to also get it warmed up a couple more degrees. It was already covered by a dark colored tee shirt,so I put my fleece lined CPO over it to warm it up a little. About 3 degrees. it took about another day for it to reproduce again & start visibly fermenting.

 

[loz114]

Good news, the airlock is now bubbling so I'm happy! Cheers for all the advice any how, was educational.

 

[unionrdr]

Glad to know all is well. Just give it time to settle out clear as I said,since it'll clean up off flavors,etc at this same time. The high temps will give you some of these. But iff it isn't too bad,it'll age out between swettling clear in primary & bottle aging.