Aeration and Fermentation Q | Am I Screwed?

Your long lag time could have been due to not oxygenating your cooled wort. And/Or it could have been due to not pitching enough healthy yeast. How much yeast did you pitch, and what was the OG of your wort?

74F ambient temp could mean ~80F wort temp, which is really too high for most yeast strains. (Can't see your recipe.) High temps can lead to excessive esters (fruity flavors) and/or fusels (harsh/solventy). If there's a silver lining, it may be that the relatively long period of activity (7 days) could mean that the yeast were working slowly, and perhaps the temps didn't get that high. (Did you measure the wort/beer temps?) But it's hard to know if whatever bubbling you were seeing toward the end of that period was actually still fermentation happening or just CO2 coming out of solution post-fermentation.

 

How old was the yeast?

 

A few weeks isn't very specific, but one vial per 5.5 gallons of 1.048 wort, with yeast that was a few weeks old was IMO underpitching, regardless of any yeast manufacturer instructions that may (or may not) have led you to believe it wasn't. This could have contributed to the long lag.

 

Big mistake.

Wort should not be aerated above 80°F.

 

True enough. But I don't think that's causing the OP's lag issue.

 

I'm thinking that the lag time is basically due to underpitching.
A dry satchel is enough for a straight pitch, the smack-packs allegedly are (and if very fresh I could see it)
but the vials just won't cut it.
Other than that, the aerating to cool down? Not so good, from everything I have read.
There are plenty of threads about "no-chill" brewing, which is just that - let it cool naturally to pitch temp. As long as the kettle or whatever it is in is sealed tightly, there is minimal infection possibility. But it's that - let it cool itself, then aerate before pitching. (FWIW, the only aeration I do is pouring my wort through a large kitchen strainer into the fermenter, and I have had no issues with lag time, at least since I began making yeast starters.)

 

Hot side aerating has been believed to be an issue, but I'm pretty darn sure I've read some stuff about it being slightly debunked to the point that it doesn't hurt, but doesn't help.

 

I believe that when hot side aeration has been discussed, it's usually been with regard to incidental oxygen exposure that occurs in connection with practices such as stirring the mash or transferring hot wort, and yes, it's generally been shown that this shouldn't be an issue for homebrewers. But for someone to *intentionally* introduce high levels of oxygen to 120F wort and then let it sit overnight before pitching is an entirely different question, I would think.

I hope that Vondy will let us know how this beer turns out and whether it shows signs of oxidation. This is kind of interesting test case, except that there's a potentially confounding factor in the (probably) high fermentation temps. With ambient temps of up to 74F, we could expect the wort temp at peak fermentation to be 79-84F, which could get you more esters than you wanted. Then again, who knows?

 

Besides the obvious excessive amount of time in the danger zone cooling off overnight, I'd be worried about underpitching a ten gallon batch, and the pretty high fermentation temps throwing fusels in that bad boy. That yeast wasn't meant to get that warm. Hopefully it turns out okay for you though.