Crazy yeast!!!!!

[elielilang]

Im new to brewing and I have only just completed my second batch of home brew. Last weekend I cooked batch of pale ale wort and used a recipe that told me to aerate my wort before pitching my yeast. It also said to pitch the yeast at 68f but when i pitched it was more like 80f (I used a rehydrated dry ale yeast packet) . I pitched and covered with an air lock. Within 2 hours my airlock had bubbles streaming out of it almost continuously. the next morning there is almost no activity in my air lock. so my questions:

Is this Normal?
Is it bad to pitch yeast a little warmer that intended and if so why?
Was the yeast over-active because of the aeration?
will this change my primary fermentation time?
any other information I should know?

5 gal
OG - 1.042

Thanks so much,
-Eli

 

[samc]

80F was way too hot for pitching ale yeast. Take a gravity reading, sounds like you fermented out fast due to the high temps. More than likely you are going to have some flavors you won't like. Aeration isn't the issue.

 

[RM-MN]

You definitely will have some weird flavors with fermentation temperatures too high so give this beer plenty of time in the primary fermenter and the yeast will take care of some of them. It's still likely to have some hot alcohol "rocket fuel" taste. Think of this as a learning experience and the hot alcohol/off flavors as tuition to the school of hard knocks and use what you learned to make another, better beer.

 

[keweenaw]

Just so you know it's not recipe specific, properly aerated wort is necessary for healthy fermentation. I believe most yeast need about 8ppm of oxygen which is about what you can get via shaking or pouring wort vigorously. I'd recommend reading through the later chapters of either "How to Brew" or "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing". Both have helped my understanding immensely.