I brewed an Oberon clone on Sunday, Sept. 15. I wanted to get an authentic taste so I cultured some yeast from several bottles. Brewed as normal, cooled, aerated, pitched the yeast culture I had begun several days earlier, and put the batch into my temperature controlled fermentation fridge. OG was 1.059. Checked it over time and it wasn't doing much. Little to no activity in the blow-off tube. After a couple days I took a reading and the gravity hardly changed. At this point I thought my yeast culture was likely too weak and not much would happen. I started another yeast culture and figured I would take it slower and make sure the yeast was viable before pitching. I didn't know how this would turn out having the wort hang out for a week or 2, but I figured there might be just enough fermentation happening to keep it fresh. Fast forward to today and the second culture is almost ready to pitch. I hear a noise coming from my fermentation fridge and open it to see the blow off tube bubbling like mad (almost 1 bubble every 2 seconds). I open the top and the krausen is essentially filling the bucket. Has anyone ever seen a lag time this long? Is it possible the yeast stared off very slowly and finally reached a point where they could multiply and metabolize as desired? I had given up hope this batch would do anything without another culture, it really surprised me to come home and see it fermenting so vigorously. Do you think this lag time will have any effect on the end result beer?
You did step up the dregs several times initially, right? should be a forgiving beer style (hopefully)
