Just brewed my second ipa. I forgot to make a starter so i just pitched 2 vials of wlp007 @ around 70 degrees. It took almost 24hrs for fermenation to get started. Kept ferm temps in 68-72 range for 5 days and reaching my fg @1.013. I tasted the gravity sample before racking to secondary for dry hops and had alot of unexpected banana flavor. What do you guys think would have created that?
off flavor from slow start?
- Thread starter fsh_bstrd
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Were those temps the ambient air or the wort? If ambient, that's too hot and probably where your banana esters come from. Yeast fermentation generates heat, enough to raise the wort temperature by 10 degrees or even more. The upper range for this yeast is listed at 70F, so it's possible the wort was near or above 80F during the crucial first days of fermentation. I wouldn't worry about a slow start, it was just building healthy cells to help tackle the job ahead, which normally happens largely in a starter instead of in the fermentor.
