I got the deluxe starter kit for a birthday present in early November. I finally got a chance to make my 1st batch this past Sunday. All went well but im a little concerned about the yeast. The kit for one sat in my girlfriends parents garage for a week before I opened the gift so the yeast didn’t get into the frig until then. We didn’t have the coldest weather in Oct-Nov so im guessing the yeast was sitting in 50-60 degrees for a while. Then on brew day I took the packet of yeast out of my frig gave it some time to warm up and broke the packet inside the packet. I set a timer on my stove for 3 hours and waited for signed that the bag was ballooning, which it did look like to me but it wasn’t fully puffed out. It sat for another hour or two while I want through all the steps in the direction. Then I sterilized the packet, oxygenated the brew in the carbide, and added the liquid yeast. With that I placed the carbide in a dark room which has kept the temp around 66-68 degrees. But I haven’t seen any CO2 bubbling yet. Is my yeast working? Do I need to wait longer? Buy a new packet of yeast? Warmer temps? I have more questions than answers lol any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Just me, but I hadn’t had much luck with smack pacs, I think they hate me… I would git some dry yeast and if nothing by today, rehydrate 2 packets and pitch…. Sanitation will be of utmost now care now, so far away from brew day… Sneezles61
If the pack ballooned out in just a few hours, the yeast was in good shape. That is one advantage of using smack packs - it is obvious if the yeast is viable or not. And depending on how long it takes for the pack to swell can give you an idea of how much of the original cell count is still active.
Even though one smack pack is a drastic underpitch for a strong beer like a Belgian Tipel, it should still ferment for you. The worry about underpitching that way is that it can take a long time for the fermentation to get going, it might not ferment out as dry as it should, and it could lead to higher levels of phenolic or fruity flavors. But it will still produce beer.
You can tease it along a bit by swirling the bucket as fermentation slows. Don’t shake it just lift it by the handle and twist it back and forth. It will be fine beer I’m sure of it.
had the same thing
i do live on a tropical island where the temp its killing me almost to hot so had to find new kind of more forgiven yeast who can handle more higher temps
did find belgian w yeast who can handle higher temps at least i do hope
will brew with it saturday so went to the post office to pick up my yeast i did order dry yeast i think can not remember turned out will they are smack packs no my concern will be is it still ok i did smack the pack and it did inflate so i did do my yeast starter
now i hope it will be fine when i pitch it saturday
only way to find out will be waiting and see
Don’t know how warm you day/night temperatures are, but you can mitigate temperature fluctuations by having the fermentor in a tub of water. The water can also be cooled by adding plastic bottles filled with ice. Really warm climate thought this may take to many changes of ice bottles to be practical.
If all warm climate brewers could have the funds for a temperature controlled refrigerator there would be less worry.
indeed i do use a cement bucket with cold water and ice bottles i does seem to help keep it down to 70 the out side temp runs on a real hot day 86 thats when i do start to panic a bit
but now i am gonna make a son of fermenting box
till so far the cold water seems to help
Thank you all for your comments! I sat and watched the carbide for about 5min yesterday and did in fact see/hear a small “glug” of C02 come out the top. I guess that means that some sugar/alcohol conversion is going on. As for it being underpitched, if that is the case, id be disappointed due to the fact I used what was supplied from the kit. If typically it requires more yeast then I expect that it should be included in the kit for us noobs. But time will tell. This is my 1st go at it and I expect to try many more times. I will update this thread as results come in. Cheers!
you could try a yeast calculator to figure out on how much you need to pitch
but my self till so far one pack of yeast seems to work. did make a yeast starter yesterday with some new yeast i just got in the mail tuesday my self new to brewing about a year now and i am not using the yeast that did came with th e beer kit
did calculate on how much yeast i need to use with mr malty yeast calculator
me same problem it comes with one pack or smack pack of yeast when do order new beer kits once i am getting ready to brew do some yeast cell calculations and some times one pack of yeast is enough to pitch but on high grav beers for example 1.058 to 1.088 why dont they put extra yeast in the beer kit?
I was remiss in not asking which beer you are brewing and the yeast being used. Did you happen to write down the date on the smack pack of yeast? Knowing the beer you are brewing and the date on the package of yeast we can give better advice in the future.
This is the pitch rate/yeast starter calculator I prefer to use.
