Apologies in advance s I know this topic has been covered a lot.
Short story - fairly sure I’ve cocked up my latest brew.
Brewed yesterday. I was on a fairly tight schedule due to commitments we had in the afternoon, but just about had enough time. All went fine and hit numbers, but after a couple of mishaps, it took longer than I intended. Short story, I had to chuck the hopstand hops in at FO, chill down to around 50 degrees and then leave to cool at its own pace while we went out all afternoon. Got back late, transferred to keg and pitched a pure pack of WLP041.
Here’s the problem. Only noticed when about to pitch that the yeast was only a month off best before date. I should have stopped and made a starter at this point to pitch today, but having extended cooling I wanted to pitch ASAP.
As it’s only around 16L of 1.042 wort, I thought I might get away with it.
No sign of fermentation by this evening. Still may come, but my question is this, assuming the yeasts viability was low, how long could it take to get going and, by proxy, how long should I realistically give it before giving up on it and throwing something else in?
I’m fairly new with liquid yeasts but love the character they bring to English styles and this is the first issue I’ve had.
Any help appreciated.
Short story - fairly sure I’ve cocked up my latest brew.
Brewed yesterday. I was on a fairly tight schedule due to commitments we had in the afternoon, but just about had enough time. All went fine and hit numbers, but after a couple of mishaps, it took longer than I intended. Short story, I had to chuck the hopstand hops in at FO, chill down to around 50 degrees and then leave to cool at its own pace while we went out all afternoon. Got back late, transferred to keg and pitched a pure pack of WLP041.
Here’s the problem. Only noticed when about to pitch that the yeast was only a month off best before date. I should have stopped and made a starter at this point to pitch today, but having extended cooling I wanted to pitch ASAP.
As it’s only around 16L of 1.042 wort, I thought I might get away with it.
No sign of fermentation by this evening. Still may come, but my question is this, assuming the yeasts viability was low, how long could it take to get going and, by proxy, how long should I realistically give it before giving up on it and throwing something else in?
I’m fairly new with liquid yeasts but love the character they bring to English styles and this is the first issue I’ve had.
Any help appreciated.
![BREWING THERMOMETER STICKERS ACCURATELY MONITOR FERMENTING BEER & WINE LIQUID TEMPERATURES 5PCS HOME BREW SPIRITS WINE LCD ADHESIVE [US]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/311DDjo2X3L._SL500_.jpg)
) as a backup NOW. If it does fail you can then recover it... a week in Christmas post and the wort could be lost.
