Crazy long lag time

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

So, after over 100 brews and occasionally repeating to nervous newbies the mantra, "Yeast can take up to 72 hours to show activity" while assuring them I had never had a yeast fail to launch, I thought I might have to eat my words (or wort?).

On Friday, I brewed what has become my house DIPA (OG 1.082, 82 IBU, 8.2 SRM, 8.2 ABV, called - what else - Old 82), cooled to 64F, pitched 2 packets of rehydrated MJ-44, stuck it in my ferm chamber and waited for Vesuvius. Twenty four hours - nothing. Forty eight hours - zip. Sixty hours - nada. Checked gravity (in case I missed something but SG had only dropped 3 points). Gave it a swirl. Seventy two hours - the tiniest evidence of maybe a bubble or two. Eighty four hours - we have liftoff. Krausen!

It's now churning away but this is a new personal record for me - 84 hours! Holy cow! Has anyone else had a lag this long? I would be curious what the longest lag time is.

 

[ncbrewer]

I'll bet Papazian's RDWHAHB was starting to wear pretty thin by the time it took off. Do you suppose something went wrong during rehydration? I once got my rehydrating yeast too hot by accident. Fortunately, I noticed it and started over with a new packet. According to Danstar, too long a wait between starting rehydration and pitching can cause a problem (yeast are ready to eat, but no food available). At least it finally took off.

 

[FVillatoro]

Although not as a lengthy of a start up time as yours, I ocassionally use Safale US-05 whenever I don't feel like making a starter, and to brew a cream ale recipe that is "cheap" compared to what a hop-heavy pale ale would cost.

From my experience, and previous batches, once I re-hydrate the yeast and pitch I start seeing lots of bubbling activity in about a day tops. However, this last time 2 days went by and nothing. Early in the 3rd day it was chugging away, but I found that odd. What I did do different this time, is that I rehydrated the yeast for longer than my usual 30 mins ( I believe I did close to an hour - can't remember).

Either way the beer still went to 1.009 FG as expected. I used 5oz of the same slurry to brew a 1.057OG amber ale the next day, and it was going berzerk when I went to check (less an a day later).

I believe that the yeast can be mishandled sometimes by the shipper/shop/brewer and it may decrease viability.

Brew on!:rockin:

 

[Kerrbrewer]

I used BRY-97 for the first time a few batches ago. It broke the record held by WLP-400 which was 52 hours. The 97 took 68 hours.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Do you suppose something went wrong during rehydration?

Believe me, I was second guessing and reanalyzing every step of my process. I rehydrated for about 30 min before pitching and the rehydration water was at about 85F. I even checked the Mangrove Jack's website thinking maybe I remembered the rehydration process wrong.

I believe that the yeast can be mishandled sometimes by the shipper/shop/brewer and it may decrease viability.

This may be the answer. I got the yeast at my LHBS but I wonder if somewhere along the line it may have been frozen or overheated or otherwise mistreated so it took a while to wake up.

In general, my experience has been that some dry yeasts (like US-05) tend to have a longer lag. But this one was a good 36 hours longer than any other brew I've done. I don't know if my swirling woke them up or it was just coincidence. I did notice that the break material and trub settled out quicker than usual after pitching. I wonder if the yeast just got buried under all that crud. At this point, it's all just a guess. The funny thing is that, as I type this, it's churning away with 3" of krausen almost 6 days after brewing.

At least now I can RDWHAHB

 

[MizzouFermentationScience]

If you really want your sphincter to pucker, try native ferments. But for all the pitchers out there, please realize that freeze dried yeast is very susceptible to stirring. Wine studies have shown 90% mortality for yeast which was stirred during rehydration. I use very hot water (over 140 F), and cool it down with wort until it's 105-120. Add dry yeast, NO STIRRING, then add a little more cooled wort every 10 minutes, decreasing temp by 10 f, until I'm at ~70F. That is my professional method when thousands of dollars are on the line- at home I just leave the fermentor outside for a day and accept 6 day lag phase.

 

[kh54s10]

I guess I have been rehydrating all wrong. I have always stirred the yeast somewhat gently to get it all wet. I have let most of them sit for more than 30 minutes and once almost 2 hours. The longest lag time I have had in 5 years was just over 24 hours. Most are going strong in 8-10 hours when I check int the morning. Many are pitched at 5pm to 7pm and are showing signs before going to bed at 11pm.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

I always add the yeast to boiled and cooled water at about 85-95F and let it sit for 15 min then stir and wait another 15 min and check the temp. If it isn't around 70F, I start adding wort to gradually cool it and then pitch. IIRC, this is what most of the dry yeast companies recommend. Maybe I need to check that out again.

In the past, I have noticed that the ones that took a while to cool (>1 hour) can have a little longer lag. This one was only about 30 min. BTW, as of tonight (a week+ after brewing) it still has an inch of krausen so the yeast sure seem healthy enough now

 

[MizzouFermentationScience]

If there isn't sugar in your rehydration water, the yeast will begin to die within 10 minutes. That's why I use cool wort to bring hot water down to 110 F. Even then, I feed those bastards ever 10 minutes to make sure. Personally, I pay very little attention to yeast for homebrew, add it, don't add it, dump dregs from a bottle in a fermentor, etc... But that's because it's 5 gallons, I'm curious, I'll drink it no matter what, and I'm in no hurry to start ferm.

That being said, using freeze dried yeast on $30k tank of fruit- I take it very seriously. It blows my mind that so many homebrewers are ridiculously scared about sanitation (I think they would die if they tried to make wine) yet there's not a lot of respect for treating yeast properly. Yeast is sanitation's best friend, dominant culture fermenting strongly can cure/prevent a lot of problems.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Update - Fermentation finished up fine - 2 points below estimated FG. When I went to dry hop, I tasted the gravity sample and tasted what I guess others have referred to as a vegetal taste. Kind of like rotted spinach. I've heard of this before but it's usually been associated with dry hopping for too long. Mine hadn't even been dry hopped yet. It wasn't a strong flavor. Just a little on the back of the tongue.

Anyway, I went ahead and dry hopped for 5 days then cold crashed and added gelatin. Bottled it two days ago and it tasted great. No vegetal taste at all. I'll report back once it's conditioned a bit. It seems to have all worked out well but it has sure been a strange brew!

 

[55x11]

It's now churning away but this is a new personal record for me - 84 hours! Holy cow! Has anyone else had a lag this long? I would be curious what the longest lag time is.

Wow - 84 hours! I admire your patience! I would have re-pitched at 48 hours for sure.

Some of my beers reach terminal gravity in half of that time.

(the IPA I just brewed just this Saturday and pitched on Saturday 9PM reached 1.012 or so from 1.060+ in 36 hours, it's cold crashing now).

 

[ncbrewer]

Wow - 84 hours! I admire your patience! I would have re-pitched at 48 hours for sure.

Some of my beers reach terminal gravity in half of that time.

(the IPA I just brewed just this Saturday and pitched on Saturday 9PM reached 1.012 or so from 1.060+ in 36 hours, it's cold crashing now).

What's going on with the SG down and back up? There are some spikes up to 0.009 increase (or about that). I guess this is one of the electronic SG read-out's, but the numbers don't seem to make sense.

 

[55x11]

What's going on with the SG down and back up? There are some spikes up to 0.009 increase (or about that). I guess this is one of the electronic SG read-out's, but the numbers don't seem to make sense.

This is from "brewometer" aka "tilt" - the device floats inside fermenter and reports temperature and SG based on the angle of tilt of the device.

During active fermentation I suspect it may be kicked around by the krausen moving around, so you have to watch for general trends than minute to minute reporting which has a large data scatter. But once fermentation slows down, it is self-consistent to maybe 2 points or so.

PS: just checked and the last 121 points (taken every 15min), since yesterday morning till now, when the gravity should be fairly stable, the average is 1.0103 with standard deviation of 0.0010. So it's pretty precise when conditions are stable, but could fluctuate quite a bit when it's floating in the foamy and active krausen.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

I love it! Watching your SG drop in real time. I would just sit there for hours watching the readout

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

So here's the final report. I chilled the first bottle and cracked it open tonight. Drum roll ........ It's great! Clear as a bell with a nice head, aroma and flavor. No vegetal taste at all. For such a screwy brew this came out as well, or even possibly better, than any of the previous versions. Oh, well. On to the next one. Cheers!

 

[therev71]

I am really happy I found this thread.

I just made a Neipa yesterday.
1.051 OG 19L 20C pitched WLP095 package with no starter.
Aerated the wort for 5 minutes.

Normally I see fermentation by the next morning but this morning when I got up there was nothing in the airlock moving at all.
I checked and the carboy is sealed so after I read this thread I feel better knowing that it has some lag time.

 

[CodyRW]

I'm also glad I found this thread even though it's years late... I brewed a typical Pale Ale 1.048 OG, 5.5 gal. Pitched Imperial "House" after letting it come to room temp like I normally do and checked the next morning...Nothing. That evening, nothing. Next day, same. I noticed a floating "cake" on the surface that looked like it had a layer of wort in between the top and bottom of the cake, but no airlock activity. I gave it a gentle swirl and the cake sort of came apart and activity started pretty quickly after that. I've never had an Imperial product take longer than a few hours but we have recently moved back to our farm and supplies travel longer distances via hot delivery trucks (currently it's late Aug so I'm assuming that is what happened). I will be using starters for all of my yeast from now on to give me a better idea of what I'm working with. Sitting on day 4 now and I'm at high krausen and the smells coming off of it are beautiful. I'll try to report back with a taste test.

As a side note, I have a ferm chamber/inkbird setup with temps being held at 68*, so no issues there.

 

[MajorJC]

@CodyRW Welcome to Homebrew Talk Forums. Hope to see your Intro post in our New Member Introductions thread.