GET ME 50CCs OF CALIFORNIA ALE YEAST, STAT!
I had to do the equivalent of emergency surgery on my beer last night. I got home and fermentation still hadn't started. There were some suspicious-looking spots in there, as well. So I made a run to the brew store, got some ale yeast, walked around with it in my pocket for an hour, and pitched it. Hopefully, anything unsavory going on in there will be blown out with the krausen, and the yeast will produce enough alcohol to keep things under control. I figured I could spend $6.50 to try and save a batch of beer or I could compost it and start over. I have now officially entered the realm of experimental brewing.
When I left home, there was a good bit of foam already formed. Hopefully by the time I get home, the yeast will have cleaned house and there won't be too much funkiness.
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4 comments:
Huh. That's odd. Do you think the wort was maybe too hot when you pitched the original yeast?
I know I've mentioned this before, but I used to make a starter culture the night before I brewed, and it made a HUGE difference. Fermentation starts immediately, and it really goes to town.
I think that the wort was too hot, yes. That and the fact that I used a lager yeast that would undoubtedly have been happier at a much lower temperature are what did the original yeast in. There couldn't have been too much contamination, since it took more than 48 hours for a visible problem to develop, so hopefully it will all turn out OK.
Liquid yeast should be pretty reliable, and except for this one time, it hasn't failed me yet. My one concern about maing a started would be that it's just one more time for something to get contaminated. I think in this case the wort was so hot that it would have killed off all the yeast regardless of the cell count. I know they yeast I originally pitched were active and viable, because they had built pressure in their vial that released when I cracked the seal.
Ah well. This is the stuff of which lessons are made, I guess.
It's not really an issue of reliability -- I always used liquid yeast, too. It's more an issue of numbers. You increase the numbers of active yeast by orders of magnitude when you use a culture. It just really jumpstarts fermentation in a spectacular way. For me, sanitizing a 500 ml flask and a pint of wort was easy, and the payoff of much more reliable fermentation was definitely worth it. But your mileage may vary.
I'll give it a shot next time.
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