Fermentation Notes, Porter, 27feb2010

Well, I woke up the next day, and it doesn't appear like the yeast are getting a good start, no krausen, no "fermenty" smell, no bubbles, etc.... I'm pretty sure that this is because I pitched them too cold (~58F) due to overcooling the wort, and with this being a very flocculant yeast, they probably just said F this, i'm going back to sleep and sank to the bottom to hibernate. So at this point, the fermenter is up to a more reasonable 66F, so I decided to shake up the fermenting bucket, rehydrate a slightly expired (but have been in freezer for most of storage time) packet of the same s-04 ale yeast, and repitch another set of yeast (about 12 hours after the first). One thing of note was that this packet, despite being older than the other really seemed to be more alive during the rehyrdation process, they were foaming up and bubbling in the water and whatnot. I'm not sure if this is any indication as to the viability of this packet vs. the first packet (which should have been fine), but anyways, in they went, and hopefully they will find the warmer environment more appealing than their hibernating friends, maybe they will even wake them up and get them into the mix, who knows.

So the lesson from this story, when you put your ice in the sink to cool your wort, make sure to put the stopper in the sink drain as you fill it with water, otherwise your ice melts down the drain and you have no clue how much new ice to put back into the sink. In my case, I put too much, and overcooled the wort (as it goes for my process of adding it to 3 gallons of cold water in the fermenter).

I hope to return from school to a nice brewery smell in my upstairs bathroom.

Update: Fermentation has started within 4 hours of repitching as evidenced by bubbling in airlock (also nice to know that my new fermentation bucket lid/grommet is actually air tight unlike the old one). The temp is up to 68F. So this means either the original yeast just needed to be roused up by shaking the fermenter around, they needed things a little warmer, the repitched yeast have already got it going, or some combination of the above things are occurring. I guess all that matters is that some yeast are alive and hungry, so all is well ..... feast bitches. I suppose if both pitchings of yeast get active now, this might be a pretty rapid fermentation as it it would translate to somewhat of an overpitching with 2 packets of dry yeast in ~5 gallons of 1.051 wort, but I don't think it will be excessive, the final product might just be a little less estery in flavor than a single packet would have been.