homebrew help

Yes. Be ready to wait up to two days before you see vigorous action.

It's extremely unusual for yeast to not ferment at all. Especially since you did a starter. Why your first try didn't work is difficult to explain given the information you provided.

 

Bacteria doesn't prevent yeast from fermenting. Lack of wort aeration doesn't prevent yeast from fermenting.

100% dead yeast prevents fermentation. Pitching into sub 55F wort prevents fermentation at a steady temperature.

The people looking at this thread have collectively made thousands of beers. I'd be surprised if anyone here has pitched a starter and it didn't make beer.

 

Something else that may be an explanation is that you had your starter wort too hot when you initially pitched to make the starter. You may have offed the yeast right there.

 

He did say the starter was 72F. If it was above 125F at pitching then that killed the yeast.

Did the starter make a bunch of foam on the surface?

 

Brew_Betty's question was about your yeast starter. What were the conditions with it?

 

The last opportunity to point a finger that I can think of..... how fresh/old was your yeast?

 

I'm not familiar with the smack packs to know if that date is a 'packaged' date or a 'use by' date.

It sounds like we've reached the point to just wait to see how your re-pitched yeast will do. I suggest that you also carefully 'rock & roll' the carboy to see if you can incorporate some air into the liquid.

 

Wyeast uses a packaged on date. That smack pack is a little over 2 months old and it contained viable yeast since:

"I pitched using Wyeast 1968 smack pack in a 1L starter. The smack pack had active yeast I'm assuming because the package expanded a few hours after breaking the nutrient pack inside."

Cheers!

 

If you think you got the job done good yesterday, I wouldn't take a chance again of breaking that carboy.

 

Whatever you do, please stop adding yeast nutrient. It doesn't evaporate if it's not being used.

If the original pitch was a dud, then yes, I would reset the panic clock over again after pitching more yeast. Good Luck...I don't see anything in this thread to suggest a reason for the first yeast pitch to have been dead. Hopefully the second pitch will be the charm.

 

What!?! This is your 'baby' here!!

No wait, your got it right it is just indeed beer.

Cheers!

 

I truly hope that collectively we can keep you "off the ledge" but in all honestly I do indeed appreciate your feelings here.

I really wish I knew the specific answer here. It appears that the yeast you received was OK (the smack pack expanded) and everything you detailed about the starter appears OK as well. So, why would the yeast from your starter 'poop out'? The lack of aeration (oxygenation) was sub-optimum but that should not be a 'killer' here.

Hopefully the introduction of dry yeast will be a savior here.

I also wish I had the answer on how to better improve future batches here but that can't happen since I am stumped here.

Cheers!