Suspect I had a bad pitch...

[jwbeard]

Thought I'd go straight to the experts: I pitched a sweet stout last night and the yeast (White Labs English Ale Yeast) has been behaving... strangely. First it was forming these globular/cloudy superstructures in the wort, so I aerated and mixed it up a bit. This morning (T+20 hours) there's still zero activity, which I wouldn't be worried about if the yeast wasn't all clumped up and floating at the top of the wort. I pitched it a bit hot (80º instead of 70-75º), but brought it down with an ice bath and kept it in the 64-70 range overnight.

Is this a RDWHAHB situation, or should I be thinking about repitching the wort before a wild strain takes hold?

 

[Yooper]

Oh, that yeast is very clumpy. It looks like cottage cheese curds to me!

Don't worry about it. You may have underpitched (usually you need a starter for liquid yeast and OGs above about 1.040 or so) so it may take a while to get going. But the yeast itself sounds fine!

 

[3PegBrew]

No Activity for 48 hours


:rockin: Underpitching yeast since Man started brewing:rockin:​

 

[JLem]

Oh, that yeast is very clumpy. It looks like cottage cheese curds to me!

Don't worry about it. You may have underpitched (usually you need a starter for liquid yeast and OGs above about 1.040 or so) so it may take a while to get going. But the yeast itself sounds fine!

+1 This yeast is a lot of fun to clean out of the fermenter - almost jelllo-like. Leave it be and you should see fermentation take off soon. If it hasn't within 72ish hours, then you can start worrying

 

[ndsgr]

I use this yeast quite a bit. It will clump even in a starter. In fact, you almost have to keep swirling while you are pouring the starter in the fermenter, else you'll miss a ton stuck at the bottom.

Also, it will form lots of rafts throughout fermentation that will look like mold.

With a proper starter, it tends to take off after about 4 hours in my experience. One nice thing, I've yet to have it blow off even with a slightly overfilled carboy. Granted, I use fermcap, but even with fermcap, WLP550 or 500 will try to flood the basement.