I've had a chocstout fermenting for 13 days at a temp between 68-70. OG was 1056. Lots of krausen shooting through the blowoff the first 3 days.

I checked the gravity last night: 1030 - the same as it was 5 days ago. She's not doing too much bubbling. When I was pitching the two liter starter, I poured it in without shaking her up, leaving a lot of the yeast that had settled to the bottom still in the jug. I'm pretty sure that was a no no.

Should I pitch some more yeasticles? If so, should I be doing anything special or can I just beat my smack pack and shoot it in?

'PRECIATE IT thanks

So you poured off the 2 liters of starter into your fermenter and then dumped the yeast at the bottom? If thats the case you want to do the exact opposite. After your starter is fermented you want to chill overnight and pour off the wort, swirl up all of the yeast and sediment and pitch that portion of your starter.


Does your beer taste hot and boozy? If your beer doesn't taste bad then i would get another active starter going and re-pitch.

Westco

I poured the starter wort into the fermenter, and then realized I probably should have swirled the yeast around to pour in as well. So I tried to get as much of the leftover sediment into the fermenter but a lot of it was left behind.

So I'm supposed to be dumping the starter wort, swirling the yeast/sediment at the bottom, and pitching only that?

Oh and the beer tastes great, just a bit sweet.

I'm dealing with the same scenario for my Fullers ESB. I roused the yeast by swirling the carboy and raised the temp 2 degrees and th ings are going again.

If you add yeast you need to add an active starter ..... at high krausen, supernatant AND sediment. All the O2 in your beer is used up and there is alcohol present that will deter new yheast from wanting to get going.

Animal is right. Make a starter and when it has a good head on it pitch into your beer. I would make a 1 liter starter with 100 Grams of DME. And yes depending on how big your starter is, its always good practice to decant your starter wort leaving just enough to swirl to get all the yeast.

Westco

The yeast in solution will work, but it will take a lot longer. I haven't seen many homebrewers that has a full yeast/microbio lab set up yet, but when you grow yeast, optimally it should be at room temp (28C) with shaking between 225-250 rpm for at-least 16 hours but not much over 24 hours. If this is how you grew up your yeast then there should be a very little yeast at the bottom of your flask if any. With a stir plate you wont get the same oxygenation and then pitching the settled yeast will be better since the cells will be slightly more stressed.

If you want to try and "jump start" the yeasts again try to bring the temp around 70-74F and give it a little air, pull air lock swirl once plug back up. This should bring back some of the cells from stationary phase into growth/log phase and hopefully save the beer.

PS This is from a scientific background instead of homebrewing background. I grew yeast and bacteria in a molecular lab setting for the past 4 years by this method with great results, o.d. of greater than 0.6 when diluted 1 microliter of culture to 1ml.(the culture ended up looking like condensed chicken noodle soup and was thicker.)