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Late starting fermentation
I've been brewing for 10 years, but every time I think I've seen it all, something new crops up, at least new to me. I recently bought a tiered setup that allows me to fly sparge for the first time. In doing this, I ended up with my final volume of wort to be about 4 gallons rather than the usual 5+. So it goes, I says to myself, I'll fix that next time and just resign myself to a smaller batch. Pitched a smackpack like usual, and no fermentation activity for a week. Figured I didn't have a good seal on my fermenter and racked to secondary (over some dry hops), and checked SG and it was high, like around 1.080. So now I'm panicing figuring this batch is screwed, which maybe it is. Thinking the problem was that the OG was too high (didn't check it, alas), I added some clean H20 to the secondary, popped a fermentation lock on it and said a short prayer. This morning I check on it and it's fermenting like crazy. So did I finally activate the original yeast by dropping the SG down with the water, or did I just introduce some type of wild yeast from the secondary fermenter or the hops? I'll know for sure in a couple of weeks, but I'd love to hear some opinions from them what knows/them what's been there.
Likely your yeast wasn't up to the task of fermenting a 1.080 beer. The date could've been old as well. Even with very fresh yeast and a lower OG (say 1.050) I would still make a starter. This ensures yeast viability and builds your cell count up to a pitching rate more likely to get the results your looking for.
Check out mrmalty.com
Hey it happens to the best of us. I under pitched a Bock last weekend. It took nearly 48 hrs for visible signs of fermentation and that was after repitching more yeast at the 24 hour mark. It's going well now but throwing off a bit more sulfur than usual.
Good luck.
It fermented without oxygen...
It fermented without yeast?...
It fermented without sugar, or malt in the least?...
Then the brewer thought something he hadn't before, that brewing, perhaps, was a little bit more.
sewer_urchen wrote:
It fermented without oxygen...
It fermented without yeast?...
It fermented without sugar, or malt in the least?...
Then the brewer thought something he hadn't before, that brewing, perhaps, was a little bit more.
Awesome.
Someone has been reading Dr Seuss again........ 
Couldn't help it...Grinch was on while I was reading the post. 
Ah yes, the Grinch,
Anyway, back to the topic. I can't say I have had an issue like this before, the only thing I can think is adding some extra water to lower the gravity and transferring to the secondary probably added enough oxygen to the wort to kick start the yeast. I think there is a pretty good chance your beer will turn out fine, although you will probably lose some of the hop aroma and flavor from the dry hops during fermentation.
Like most things in life, time will tell.
ruralbrew wrote:
Someone has been reading Dr Seuss again........
LOL, Must have kids eh? LOL.
There was a man from Timbuktu
Wanted to try his hand
at making homebrew......
ok feel free to add from here, see how far we can take it. kinda like "nevermind" on another site. lol.
DC
ruralbrew wrote:
Ah yes, the Grinch,
Anyway, back to the topic. I can't say I have had an issue like this before, the only thing I can think is adding some extra water to lower the gravity and transferring to the secondary probably added enough oxygen to the wort to kick start the yeast. I think there is a pretty good chance your beer will turn out fine, although you will probably lose some of the hop aroma and flavor from the dry hops during fermentation.
Like most things in life, time will tell.
likely it's fine. 2 problems i can think of that might have already been mentioned is, temp of wort was too low for yeast to start or once you added the water you aireated it and it had ample oxygen to get going. likely it was already going but at a slower pace due to lack of oxygen.
remember: RDWHAHB
DC
deafcone wrote:
There was a man from Timbuktu
Wanted to try his hand
at making homebrew......
He bought a jug,
and a numbered mug,
and said "screw it, a six pack will do"
Thanks for all the responses (especially the creative ones!). I'm gratified to hear that it may turn out fine. It's still fermenting nearly a week later. Brewed my second batch on the top tier yesterday and it went much better. It seems I need significantly more sparge water for fly sparging than batch sparging. With batch, I had to calculate the volumes pretty carefully, but with my trusty refractometer I can just sparge away until the runnings get low enough. Different process entirely.
I'll post again in a couple of weeks when I have the chance to try the beer.
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