Will likely have to repitch.

[MyCarHasAbs]

Made an Irish stout. Grains were sitting in the basement for two months sealed up but were checked prior to brewing. Sweetness was still present and they were still crunchy. I pitched around 1am friday night and used liquid yeast for the first time. I've yet to see any signs of krausen or bubbles in the air lock.

After watching this video I don't think the smack pack was ready to be pitched yet. It wasn't as swollen as this..



Will probably have to order some dry yeast and re pitch later this week.

Thoughts?

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

Here's a visual.


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I once dated a girl who told me I will not drink beer in front of our children. I dumped her the next day.

 

[flars]

What was the OG and volume of the wort in the fermentor? What was the production date of the yeast? A starter may have been required if the yeast was over a few weeks old.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

spoke to a dude name Lance from Midwest. The guy was spot on. My basement was f***in 58 degrees which is too cold for the yeast to be active. Moving to the bathroom upstairs (which goes unused due to plumbing problems.)

Will wait another 24 hours after moving.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

What was the OG and volume of the wort in the fermentor? What was the production date of the yeast? A starter may have been required if the yeast was over a few weeks old.

I'm going to get some heat for this but I never measure gravity. Been doing this for about a year and never once checked it. Last brew was very tasty.

The yeast was only two months old at most but was sitting in the fridge the whole time in an insulator packet.

 

[flars]

I'm going to get some heat for this but I never measure gravity. Been doing this for about a year and never once checked it. Last brew was very tasty.

The yeast was only two months old at most but was sitting in the fridge the whole time in an insulator packet.

Most likely an under pitch with yeast that old. Lag time would be greatly increased. 58°F would be ideal ambient for most ale yeasts. The heat produced by the fermentation would bring the wort temperature into the low 60°s.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

Hmmm. Just moved it to the bathroom and this has formed over the last 2 hours. Can't till if this is sign of life or sign of infection.


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[duboman]

58oF is too cold and warming it up will probably do the trick. At two months old you most likely underpitched as well, should have made a starter.

As a side note and not to flame you but not checking gravity is just bad practice and makes it difficult to develop any sort of consistency in your process. Not to mention that one day you may wind up stuck and wind up with exploding bottles. It takes so little time to verify gravity readings that it's just silly to not perform tis basic step in the brewing process, that's my .02 anyways...........

 

[flars]

Looks like bubbles forming, not a pellicle.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

That's what I thought initially but the way it was breaking up like ice bergs reminded me of the many images I've seen of infections.

And I'll start practicing that on the next brew but I don't check gravity for the same reason I don't rack to secondary. Just another chance to introduced baddies to your wort. I'll admit it's a confidence factor there too but I haven't thought much about it because I'm getting good results with out it.


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_____________________________
I once dated a girl who told me I will not drink beer in front of our children. I dumped her the next day.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

That's what I thought initially but the way it was breaking up like ice bergs reminded me of the many images I've seen of infections.

And I'll start practicing that on the next brew but I don't check gravity for the same reason I don't rack to secondary. Just another chance to introduced baddies to your wort. I'll admit it's a confidence factor there too but I haven't thought much about it because I'm getting good results with out it.


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I once dated a girl who told me I will not drink beer in front of our children. I dumped her the next day.

 

[estricklin]

Sorry to hear it's not taking off like you had hoped.

Anytime you have liquid yeast sitting around unrefrigerated, it's going to go south QUICK! Even at 58-60 it's not a good situation. Even if it was refrigerated, at a couple months you would want to make a pretty big starter. Also should mention, that depending on the gravity of your wort, a smack pack just barely contains enough yeast to ferment a 5 gallon batch in the first place. There's always some viability lost to shipping and storage, unless you have a microscope it's best guess. Don't focus on if the smack pack expands or not, although if it does that's usually a good sign.

60F is a bit low for most ale strains, some seem to ferment "ok" there, but many are sluggish. If you have a basement that holds a pretty constant temperature of around 58, you should look into using lager yeast strains until you can get yourself some decent temperature control going.

Hopefully moving it upstairs to where it's warmer everything should be fine, it doesn't exactly look infected, rather that it's starting to ferment from what i can tell in your photo.

Some things you might think about in the future, making starters, building a stir plate (very cheap and easy tons of threads about it), and finding some ways to control your temperature. Maybe keep some dry yeast on hand in the future for emergencies like this.

Either way, good luck and let us know how it turns out!!

Edit:

Oh and the gravity thing, don't sweat it. Eventually you may want to start checking it but for now concentrate on the more important aspects, such as having a good healthy fermentation.

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

4 hours later, we have bubbles in the air lock and the foam is getting thicker. The temp change did the trick. I do believe it was an under pitch now. But....if I think the krausen looks weak by tomorrow I may order some dry yeast just in case. This is going to be my "experimental" batch for xmas. In two weeks I'm pouring a few ounces of mint leaves that have been soaked in vodka in there to go with the flavor of the coacoa nibs I used at ten minutes left of the boil.

I sh*t you not my fiance came down stairs and said the following "I thought you were making beer and not chocolate cake!". It smelled amazing during boil lol. So yea my goal is for it to taste like liquid Andes mint.

As for starters, I'll need to watch some vids. I'm a big time visual learner. Reading directions does very little for me as I have reading comprehension problems. Gotta love ADD.