Brooklyn Brewshop Chestnut Ale question

Not being familiar with Brooklyn Brewshop kits, I don't know if you're dealing with a dry yeast packet or a liquid yeast.

Dried yeasts need to be rehydrated before they'll get off and running and if you pitched it straight into the fermenter, it'll probably get busy right away but the activity will seem to be lost in a five gallon container. By the third or fourth day you'll start seeing some activity and by the 10th-14th day it'll be done. I personally haven't used a dry yeast packet for beer since 1997 - you get faster, cleaner results from the liquid yeasts. Back then they were in "smack packs" that you had to burst the encapsulated 'wort' to feed the sleeping yeast for a few days before pitching. The pack would swell up and when it was taut you knew it was time, but you had to arrange your brewing schedule to the possibly fickle yeast in the pack.

The vials of liquid yeasts they have now are pitchable straightaway, but you have to be cognizant of two factors - the age of the vial and the temperatures it has been stored at. If you bought a kit that had a liquid yeast in it and it hadn't been refrigerated, the yeast might well have died off (although in my experience there's always a handful of the little guys who'll survive almost any hell you put them through).

Back to your question - yes, by all means you can add another fresher yeast to the fermenter to get things rolling - bearing in mind the factors I mention above. If you value the flavor and re-pitchability of your yeast, you'll only use the vials of liquid yeast because they're inherently healthier. You can generally capture the top layer of yeast sediment out of your fermenter into a beer bottle (along with a little of the beer it was drinking) and cap that and save for the next batch if you're brewing any time soon after bottling the batch you've finished. I would never advocate repitching from a dried yeast fermentation at this point - they generally give off-flavors and more volatile esters than the liquid cultures and those things only magnify with subsequent batches.

The shelf life of your bottle-housed sleeping yeasts will vary with age and temperature as well. I had three bottles that I had every intention of using "right away" and then I didn't brew for weeks/months and when I did my 3-gallon coffee stout last month it didn't take off with the first yeast. So after two days I put in the second. ANOTHER four days later, still nothing. Added the third repitch yeast plus dribbled in the yeast sediment from a couple of bottles that I had poured to drink and then it took off. And went crazy...once I got waaay too much yeast in it put up a krauesen that was longer-lasting than any I've ever had. It finally died down a few days ago and I'll be bottling today.

As a final note - you can do all sorts of things "wrong" and wind up surprised at how amazingly good the final product turns out to be. Sanitize, use the best yeast you can find, and keep general notes and you'll be fine - but beer is beer, it's always a learning experience, and you have to give the beer time to find itself. If it tastes weird when you open the first bottle, set it back in a cool dark corner and let it take its time. Sometimes they improve with age. People get hung up with "freshness" buying commercial beers, but you have to remember that they're dead. Your homebrew is alive. And life always finds a way.

 

DISCLAIMER - I do have to confess that I brewed a one gallon jug of mead in August and used a dry champagne yeast for fermentation. When it got done, I repitched the yeast into a five-gallon fermenter of cider (well, apple cider plus grape juice and honey) and then when that was bottled I used the yeast again to make a batch of rum...or rum-ish fermented beverage. The cidery flavor carried over, although I think that cane sugar and molasses will give you that anyway. I froze several plastic bottles of the stuff, poured out the dark caramel liquid and left behind the ice to effectively up the ABV and then steeped it with oranges and cinnamon while driving off the less desirable alcohols. It's interesting. Doesn't taste like rum, doesn't taste like cider and God only knows how it'll be as it ages. But it was a fun experiment for about $11.

 

Lori came in from having coffee on the back porch - "What, are you writing a dissertation?"

 

Looked Brooklyn Brewshop up online - it's a variation on the "Mr. Beer" kits. It's a good one-time learning experience for the basic practice of homebrewing extract beers but they're probably responsible for driving more people away from making good beer at home than for generating enthusiasts.

It's only a one-gallon "batch"...that's really small to get anything but variable results from. Too much surface-to-volume ratio and the extract is likely half corn sugar and half barley extract.

websites for two of the better homebrew supply houses at the bottom here - but if you can find someone who sells grains, malt extracts, yeast, supplies etc in your local area, go there. They'll probably be able to give you good advice about putting together recipes that'll really knock your socks off, and the "kits" they sell will be all-malt instead of the corn-sugar-adjunct-heavy stuff that you got with your Brooklyn kit. Not to mention that there will be other homebrewers in the shop and they'll talk your ear off about the process once they learn you're getting started (akin to what I've been doing to your here lol).

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/beer-equipment-starter-kits
https://www.midwestsupplies.com/homebrewing-equipment/equipment-kits.html

 

Quite welcome. The world always needs new brewers and what they bring to the table. Keep at it

 

More info would be helpful. At what temperature was the wort when you pitched the yeast, how long has it been since you pitched the yeast, what yeast did you use, what is the date stamp on the yeast, and so forth?