I brewed 10 days ago and don’t think my yeast work very good. I don’t think I prepared it right. But that’s not my question. My question is, is 10 days to late to pitch some new correctly prepared yeast, or am i stuck with what ever I get?
Thanks for the help.
Why do you say it did not work very good ? I’d suggest checking specific gravity to see if your wort has fermented. If it has, then your yeast “worked”. If it has not, and if you sanitized well and kept the wort safe from contamination, then pitching additional yeast now should be OK. The risk of leaving wort unfermented for days is contamination by wild yeast or other things that can spoil the beer.
10 days is really too long to pitch fresh yeast. But it depends on why you think the yeast did not perform the way it should. If the yeast failed completely and the wort didn’t ferment, then 10 days leaves the door open for botulism. Unlikely, but the consequences are pretty severe.
If the yeast stalled, leaving a lot of unfermented sugars or fermentation byproducts, then you can add more yeast to try to get it to finish but it’s a bit more work than just preparing another starter. The yeast won’t work well being pitched directly into an alcoholic environment, and may just cause the new pitch to stall as well. If you’re fermenting in a bucket, you can lift it by the handle and give the bucket a few sharp twists to resuspend the yeast and maybe knock off a few more gravity points. Or, you can acclimate your yeast by adding some of the batch into your starter, letting it ferment, adding a bit more, and after a few steps add the active culture to the rest of the batch.
But as previously mentioned, take a gravity reading. At 10 days, it is probably full of diacetyl, acetaldehyde, suspended yeast, and all kinds of other fermentation byproducts. You need to give it enough time for the yeast to do its work, which involves cleaning up a lot of the intermediate compounds created by the yeast from the active fermentation.
If your gravity is still pretty high and fermentation stopped too soon, then you’ll need a different fix.
I got in a hurry and remembered reading somewhere that you could just dump dry yeast right into the wort right out of the package. So I did. Put the lid on my bucket and put it in the closet. I’ve checked it everyday and there has never been in action in my airlock or the foam in the bucket. This being only my second batch, I’m still learning. With more info, what do you think now? Any help is greatly appreciated.
You can. It’s not ideal, but you can. Is there any krausen ring around the bucket? Fermentation can happen fast and buckets don’t seal well, but there should be a bunch of gunk around the edge of the bucket.
Do you have a hydrometer? That’s the best way to tell if fermentation happened.
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There was a “gunk” ring. And I will check gravity when I get home. I had an OG of 1.038. About how much difference should there be?
Hard to say for sure, but it should be less than 1.020. Probably in the range of 1.010 - 1.015. What’s more important than the absolute number is whether you get the same measurement a few days apart before you bottle, that’s the only reliable way to tell whether fermentation is done.
Well porkchop I must have done something right cause the gravity reads 1.013. Thank you for your help.
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And at 1.038 a whole packet of dry yeast will eat through the wort in no time. As @porkchop mentioned, take another reading in a couple days. If it remains 1.013 it’s done.
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