Hey all, I did my first all grain last night and right as soon as I was cooling down the wort with my wort chiller my so called "waterproof" thermometer broke sitting in some sanitizer. It kind of frazzled me and I think I pitched a bit high (the wort was still a bit warm). I immediated got it into a swamp cooler and prolly dropped the temp to room temp in about an hour. Now it has been sitting for close to 12 hours and it at 68f and I see no action in the airlock yet. Should I repitch? Is the batch ruined?
Give it time; it's likely fine. I assume by warm you don't mean 130* or more? In that case you'd likely need to pitch fresh yeast
Yeah I'd say you're fine. You may end up with some flavors from the yeast you did not intend, but far bigger errors have resulted in drinkable beer
If you detected the wort to be a 'bit warm' (assuming it was a touch or taste detection process), it's likely that it was higher than 98.6 degrees or it would have probably felt cooler to you. Your question has an unknown answer until you see activity from the yeast. Do you have spare yeast, or a homebrew store nearby that you can get a replacement quickly to pitch again if needed?
I have a homebrew store I can prolly go to tomorrow morning before work. Still haven't seen any activity from the yeast. I pitched around 3am last night and it is 8pm here.
It's not unusual for fermentation to be slow starting, so don't use this delay as evidence that you killed the buggers. I'm just suggesting that you may want to have spare yeast on hand in case you need to repitch. Logically it sounds like your temp was above 100 degrees, so you likely caused some stress to your yeast, but I read that it probably would take 140 degrees to kill them. You don't want to wait too long with no viable yeast in the wort, but you should be ready to repitch if nothing is happening after 3 days. You also should NOT rely upon bubbles in an airlock being the evidence whether fermentation has started because CO2 can escape via leaks somewhere. If your beer is in a carboy, you'll see krausen bubbles forming on top, or you'll see churning of the trub in the wort. If your wort is in a bucket where you cannot see the it without raising the lid, take a peek tomorrow to see if there is any action, but resist the temptation to peek any more than twice daily, and them only for a brief moment. If you buy more yeast tomorrow, there is no harm in pitching it when you get it so that you have that insurance in knowing that good yeast are now now involved.
I woke up this morning a bit early so I could buy myself some yeast and I noticed a bunch of activity in the airlock. It is looking like we have fermentation going. I'm hoping I didn't screw up the batch that badly lol.
