Help, is my beer worth rescuing??

doesn't sound like he rehydrated the yeast. I say be patient. dry yeast when pitched directly to the wort without rehydration takes a bit longer to get started. By the time you get home there will be activity, probably. In the future it is a good idea to oxygenate the wort prior to pitching, even if you only pour from one bucket to another.

 

If you siphoned the wort into the carboy then you likely don't have enough oxygen to help the yeast do their thing. If you poured the wort from the boil pot (especially if you used a strainer to catch trub), then maybe you have enough. I'd consider rocking that carboy as aggressively as you can without breaking it so that the splashing around will get some oxygen into the wort. (Or if you have a means to oxygenate with a tank of O2, then that it safer and better.)

 

It is not a good business to risk this batch to be underpitched. Just add another rehydrated yeast pack.

 

Rehydrating is overrated.

 

Re: aeration - it's generally not considered necessary to aerate when pitching dry yeast out of the packet... if you repitch the yeast cake, then some O2 might be beneficial (or not; you can over oxygenate with O2. German and Belgian brewers mostly consider it safer to aerate with compressed air rather than pure O2).

Rehydration - commercial brewers on probrewer.com are about evenly divided between rehydrating and just tossing the dry yeast in. Both camps make some great beer so we can probably conclude that rehydration isn't a big deal.

 

You should be fine, I think the SafALe us-05 is good to 59F so you should be fine. I honestly don't think you'll have any issue with off flavors. Once the yeasty population is up and it is fermenting it will warm the beer to a point. In a 65F room you'll probably see about 68-70f on the fermentor.

 

65 F is a fine fermentation temperature -- better than 72 F, in fact, for this yeast.

Here is my interpretation of what happened. For some reason you severely underpitched to start. Given severe under pitching, better aeration might have helped. If took ~ 60 hours for the yeast to build up sufficiently for you to see fermentation activity. I believe that moving the beer to a warmer room was only coincidental, because the temperature of your beer would change minimally in four hours, given the large thermal mass. Cheers!

 

From John Palmer :

8.2.1 Lagtime or Adaptation Phase
Immediately after pitching, the yeast start adjusting to the wort conditions and undergo a period of high growth. The yeast use any available oxygen in the wort to facilitate their growth processes. They can use other methods to adapt and grow in the absence of oxygen, but they can do it much more efficiently with oxygen. Under normal conditions, the yeast should proceed through the adaptation phase and begin primary fermentation within 12 hours. If 24 hours pass without apparent activity, then a new batch of yeast should probably be pitched.

At the beginning of the adaptation phase, the yeast take stock of the sugars, FAN and other nutrients present, and figure out what enzymes and other attributes it needs to adapt to the environment. The yeast use their own glycogen reserves, oxygen, and wort lipids to synthesize sterols to build up their cell membranes. The sterols are known to be critical for enabling the cell membrane to be permeable to wort sugars and other wort nutrients. Sterols can also be produced by the yeast under poor oxygen conditions from lipids found in wort trub, but that pathway is much less efficient.

Once the cell walls are permeable, the yeast can start metabolizing the amino nitrogen and sugars in the wort for food. Like every animal, the goal of life for the yeast cell is to reproduce. Yeast reproduce asexually by "budding". Daughter cells split off from the parent cell. The reproduction process takes a lot of energy and aerobic metabolic processes are more efficient than anaerobic. Thus, an oxygen-rich wort shortens the adaptation phase, and allows the yeast to quickly reproduce to levels that will ensure a good fermentation. When the oxygen is used up, the yeast switch metabolic pathways and begin what we consider to be fermentation - the anaerobic metabolism of sugar to alcohol. This pathway is less energy efficient, so the yeast cannot reproduce as proficiently as during the adaptation phase.

The key to a good fermentation is lots of strong healthy yeast- yeast that can get the job done before going dormant due to depleted resources, rising alcohol levels, and old age. As noted, the reproduction rate is slower without oxygen. At some point in the fermentation cycle of the beer, the rate of yeast reproduction is going to fall behind the rate of yeast dormancy. By providing optimum conditions for yeast growth and reproduction in the wort initially, we can ensure that this rate transition will not occur until after the beer has become fully attenuated.

Worts that are underpitched or poorly aerated will ferment slowly or incompletely due to lack of viable yeast. Experienced brewers make a big point about aerating the wort and building up a yeast starter because these practices virtually guarantee enough yeast to do the job well.

 

I wouldn't bottle anything with a significant sulfur smell. I might consider kegging it, because you can burp it away over time. But it's too early to even worry about that.

 

I am sorry to say this beer could have developed an infection with bacteria due the long lag time before fermentation started.I hope not.

From JP :

Symptom: It smells like rotten eggs.

Cause 1: Yeast Strain Rotten egg odors (hydrogen sulfide) can have two common causes: the yeast strain and bacteria. Many lager yeast strains produce noticeable amounts of hydrogen sulfide during fermentation. The smell and any sulfur taste will dissipate during lagering.
Cure: Let the beer condition or lager for a few weeks after primary fermentation.

Cause 2: Bacteria Bacterial infections can also produce sulfury odors and if you are not brewing a lager beer, then this is a good sign that you have an infection.
Cure: Let the fermentation complete and then taste it before bottling to see if it is infected. Toss it if it is.

 

It has only been ~10 days, don't open a vein yet RDWHAHB