Hello all, novice homebrewerer here, working on my second beer and it is a brown ale. My question is do I need to re aerate my wort before repitching yeast? It has been over 48 hours with a liquid yeast starter (white labs English ale) and I have not seen any fermentation whatsover. I'm afraid that when I pitched the yeast my wort was to cold (I used some gallons of water I had recently from an event that I left outside and they were near frozen) Any ideas?? Thanks!
Could you spell out the steps you took in preparing your yeast for this beer? One possibility is that your starter has already fermented and you didn't notice. A starter is not like a full carboy of beer, it often creates little krausen (especially if you are using a stir plate), and it can happen very quickly. But I could be way off, I just can't tell what you've done so far.
So I have only aerated the wort and then just poured the liquid starter straight into the wort. With my first beer I noticed activity in the carboy and there was also airlock activity and a nice layer of krausen. This one has been stale with no activity and a cake at the bottom
If it's only been 48 hours I'd give it more time. Pitching into cold wort won't kill the yeast so it just needs to warm up and they will get to work though a little agitation to get the yeast off the bottom might help. Give it a couple more days and take a gravity reading to see if fermentation is happening. Each yeast i unique and not all of them show visible signs of fermenting. I'll leave the question of re-aerating to others as I have never repitched yeast.
I’d get it up to the 70 degree range and give it a good shake. If it’s still dead after a day or two, re-pitch. To answer your question, if fermentation hasn’t occurred I don’t see a problem with re-oxygenating, I just don’t think it will be all that beneficial. FWIW
Update. Came home to check on the wort after stopping at my LHBS and... drum roll...... Fermentation has begun! Guessing I am joining the ranks of every novice and just being impatient. Thank you everyone for the information though!
Welcome to the BA site and to this great hobby. Yeah, patience is a virtue in homebrewing, but we all have to learn the hard way. Next step is to exercise patience again and let the beer finish fermenting before you bottle it. Enjoy your beer!
