Lagering began way ahead of schedule -- by accident!

[Geordan]

I've had schwarzbier fermenting since the 20th with 34/70 at 11c; however, sometime in the past four days, while I was out of town, the heat bulb in my fermentation chamber died and i came home this evening to a temperature of 4c (chamber is in my unheated wood room). I've now replaced the bulb, but I'm guessing the yeast have already moved a good way to dormancy. So, what advice do we have? Set it to D Rest temps and hope for the best? Rock the Carboy to rouse the yeast? Would love some opinions from experienced lager brewers!

 

[Geordan]

For those who find this thread in the future and have a similar issue, I set my temp controller back to my fermenting temp, 11c, and rocked the carboy a bit to rouse the yeast. This morning, 8 hours later, it's up to 8c and there are signs that fermentation has kicked back in -- so no stress!

 

[Geordan]

So can anyone believe this happened to me AGAIN, with the SAME beer? By the time I noticed the temp had fallen to 0.6c. Put in (another) new bulb, fixed the overheating issue (I think) and putting it up to 18c for d-rest -- next morning it was bubbling away again with some small bubble clusters on the surface.

I'm staring to think that 34/70 is the most forgiving yeast on the planet!