I brewed an IPA on Friday and there has been no action in the airlock for two days. I opened it up and no krausen. I then looked and see that my yeast has a date of 3/2018 on it, Safale US-05. Should I put a new yeast packet in? If so how long can I wait as it looks like it’ll be 3-4 days for delivery? Or should I just dump the wort?
Welcome! Sometimes it takes a day or two to get going depending on a number of things. Extract or all grain? What temperature is the wort at now? What temp did you pitch the yeast at?
It’s an extract kit. The wort was at 65 when I put the yeast in. Right now room temperature is about 62, I don’t have a thermometer in the bucket. In the past I’ve put a heating pad around the bucket if it room temperature gets below 60 so haven’t tried that yet. I was worried about the yeast initially but read some blogs that 5 year old yeast works so went for it.
Thank you!
Sounds a little chilly. If it were me, I’d put some heat on it. Get it up about 66/67.
I put some heat on it and wrapped it in a blanket. Hopefully they just got too cold.
I’ve used dry yeast a couple years past the expiration date and had a bit of a lag. Of course mine was stored in a fridge so this is going to help the viability.
Adding heat was a good idea but if it doesn’t start by the end of the day tomorrow you will need to get yeast in their ASAP.
Ugg, I ordered yeast that won’t get here until the 9th. Will that be too late?
Sadly, if there is no activity, the 9th will be significantly too late. Every hour that wort sits wild yeast and bacteria will continue to multiply and without brewers yeast to out compete it will sour your sort. That’s not necessarily a bad thing just not what you want.
You can also build up from the yeast in the bottom of a bottle from a previous batch.
I take it there are no homebrew shops around… About your only other option would be to go find some Chimay, pour the beer off of the yeast and then pitch that. But of course you would now have a Belgian instead of an IPA. Where exactly are you?
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No homebrew shops in Minneapolis that are open. Something worked, heating and/or patience, as I had a steady stream of bubbles in the airlock this morning. Thank you!
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