What's your lag?

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yeoldebrewer

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I do extract brewing with re-hydrated dry yeast. I just took a look at past notes on time from pitching to formation of a "wall to wall" krausen for my past brews. Times range from 6 to 18 hours, with an average of about 11 hours.

My beers are turning out mostly good, but this seems a little slow. Does anyone have a good ballpark figure for dry yeast lag times?
 
My last batch took about 36 hours to really get going. Batch before that was less than 8hrs.
 
I aim for 12 hrs lag time.

I'm of the opinion that shorter than that can mean your wort was too warm or you pitched too much yeast. Most styles of beer benefit from the reproductive stage of fermentation in beer. Short or no lag means low or no reproduction.

I pitch about two or three degrees cooler than my optimal ferment temp and I have 12hr lagtimes like clockwork.
 
I pitched a Haus Pale Ale with Nottingham a bit warmer at about 80 degrees because I ran out of ice and time, and i don't have an Immersion chiller. (I might be switching to No Chill because this keeps happening :drunk:) It started after probably 5 hours and by 6 hours it was very very vigorous. No blow off though, but I'm using a 6.5 gallon bucket. If it was a carboy i would certainly need a blow-off tube. Usually my temp with drop down to 70 degrees but it has been sitting at 73-74 because of the vigorous fermentation.

My first batch with a Witbier yeast took about 20 hours, but I under pitched.
Second batch BM's Centennial blonde with Notty took about 10 hours. Nottingham is super fast.
 
If I use a liquid yeast w/ starter, fermentation usually starts within 6 hours. For dry yeast, I rarely rehydrate and it typically starts with 6-10 hours. very rarely has any beer taken mroe than 10-12 hours for me.
 
Safale 05 yeast blows up within a few hours and by morning is insane. White Labs vials take longer for me. I pitched one yesterday evening and had no activity this morning. However it was on the tile floor which was cooler than I normally have it and the wort was more chilled than I normally have it so I expected the delay.
 
Most of my experience is with liquid yeast, and I would agree with the previous post- 12 to 18 hours is a good number. Recently, I've been experimenting with using some dry yeasts like S-05 and Nottingham. I almost always brew in the morning, pitch maybe elevenish, and the dry yeasts are always showing significant airlock action by bedtime. I had one pack of Nottingham that showed bubbles in the airlock in 2 hours.

There are issues here, however, if one is relying on airlock activity as evidence of fermentation, as I do since I use only the white plastic bucket fermenters. I found out that my original "Ale Pail" bucket takes a lot longer to show good airlock activity than the U.S. Plastics buckets I bought more recently. These latter buckets incorporate an O-ring in the lid that is the real deal in the seal department. When you're getting CO2 production with those things, none leaks around the rim, giving earlier airlock action.
 
Since I starting making starters and/or using Dry yeast, I'm consistently getting a nice Krausen within 12 hours. It depends on how much you pitch, I've used a quart of US05 cake and had action within 4 hours. I used Notty for the first time yesterday, pitched one rehydrated pack at about 5 last night and had a beautiful Krausen this morning.
 
Thanks all for the great info.

I ferment in either a 6 gallon better bottle or 2 gallon Mr. Beer kegs. So I watch the process. I'm using the arbitrary development of a krauzen over the entire surface for start of fermentation. Of course the yeasties are super busy long before that point.

Since I will probably be using dry yeast for some time to come, I'm trying to optimize use of them. Big liquid starters are still in my future. Pitching from the previous batch is on my to-do list also.
 
I did a starter that was very quick, around 6 hours, but my last two brews took more like 36 hours to get going, one a liquid and one a dry-starter. I think it mostly had to do with pitching into wort that was warmer that optimum and maybe shocking the beasties a bit.
 
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