No Fermentation in my Pumpkin Ale

[upperNY01brewer]

This is my 8th batch and the one I was most excited about. Well its been since monday that I pitched the Wyeast London Ale and there has been zero fermentation to this point..Ive never had this problem, so at this point Im thinking that I may transfer it over to another carboy and repitch.

Any opinions out there ? The temp has been a constant 72 degrees and I took all the usual sanitizing steps so I dont know where this went south on me

 

[bdupree]

When that happens to me, I stir it up a little then repitch some danstar nottingham dry yeast. But then again, i've been getting a few bad Danstar packs too lately

 

[bdupree]

Sorry, I didn't really answer your question. I think sometimes you just get bad yeast.

 

[COLObrewer]

Wait another day and check the gravity, if it's lower than the OG then it's fermenting, I suspect it will be. Personally, if the gravity is still the same, I would still wait another day or two, maybe swirl it a tad.

 

[likwidbliss]

I would just repitch. Notty is a great alternative.

 

[WickedLB]

+1 on COLObrewer's advice.

A couple of questions:

Did you make a starter?
What was your OG?

If you made a starter you should definitely have some activity by now, but if not, the lag is understandable. Without a starter I would wait a few more days.

 

[nickmv]

+ 1 on making a starter batch.

They're easy to make and saves you the headache of being surprised like this. If your starter never ferments, you just hold off on brewing til you get another live starter going.

 

[Revvy]

What signs are you using to determine that there is not fermentation happening? Have you taken a gravity reading? That's really the only major and accurate "sign of fermentation" there is, everything else is really flawed.

So like other's have said, what is your current gravity reading?

I have to tell you that rare do brewers have "bad yest" these days. Usually when someone thinks that, they never took a reading to actually confirm there was fermentation, usually they are saying "my airlock isn't bubbling" which is not the same thing. SO what's the gravity?

 

[upperNY01brewer]

Well good news on the fermentation front, On thursday night I removed the blowoff tube and airlock and gave the wort a good stir. on friday there was visible signs of fermentation. On saturday morning it was the most rapid fermentaion Ive every seen in any of my batches, it was going very strong all day and night and has settled down as of sunday afternoon.

Now I wonder if the amount of actual pumpkin that I used and ended up in the primary had any effect on the lag time of the fermentation. I used 4 lbs of canned organic pumpkin in my wort. I filtered most of it out but a whole lot made its way into the fermentation vessel. Im guessing for sure the added oxygen into the wort surely helped.

 

[upperNY01brewer]

Also my OG was 1.050 and after 3 days was still hanging around the 1.050 range. So there definitely wasnt any thing going on there.

 

[BriarwoodBrewer]

Send the brew to me and I will see if I can get it to ferment.