Beer Forum

My most recent batch of brew had a fairly long lag time. About 36 hours. The yeast I used was wyeast 1028 London ale. I'm wondering if I should expect anything out of the ordinary? And wondering if there is any way to speed up that lag time? I cooled wort to 70 prepared smack packs about three hours before pitch and ran an oxygen stone connected to an air pump for about five mins.

It sounds like your yeast was old (or wimpy).

I like for my yeast to be at peak health before pitch, so what I do is take a Smack Pack or (White Labs pouch) and propagate it in 2L of starter wort divided into 500 ml aliquots in four 1L flasks. When the starters finishe I crash them in the fridge. When I get ready to brew I take one of the crashed 500ml starters, decant and propagate in 2L of starter wort in two 2L flasks, and when that finishes out I crash it overnight. Come brew day I decant the spent starter and add a liter of fresh cooled wort to each of the flasks, stir, oxygenate, and pitch. Using this method I will have activity (bubbles through the blowout tubes) within 3 or 4 hours.

That also gets me four brews from a pouch of yeast (yeah, I'm a cheap SOB. .

Charlie

Yeah, I agree that the best way to stop that is to have healthy active yeast. I don't go to the steps that ^^^ does, but when I have a smack pack or harvested yeast, I always put it in 1L of wort at the beginning of the brew session. A little DME and water in a flask boiled and cooled when you start brewing. The yeast will be up and chugging in an hour or two, then putting that into the main batch is my method.

Lately, to stop needing the DME, I have been running any residual liquid out of my mash tun when cleaning up and then keep it in a bottle frozen. Then when I need it, put it in a flask and boil/cool it and off we go.

The other thing I have done is to grab some of the first bit of wort coming out of the tun when the mash is done resting , water it down a bit to get it to about 1.035, and boil/cool that quickly while the main batch is running off. That usually is still quick enough to get the yeast going before the main batch is ready. That method has the advantage that it doesn't matter what the last batch was (as in, you did a stout and now you are doing a helles).

In any case, the DME method works.

menace2sobriety wrote:My most recent batch of brew had a fairly long lag time. About 36 hours. The yeast I used was wyeast 1028 London ale. I'm wondering if I should expect anything out of the ordinary? And wondering if there is any way to speed up that lag time? I cooled wort to 70 prepared smack packs about three hours before pitch and ran an oxygen stone connected to an air pump for about five mins.

Couple of questions for ya...

1. What was your OG of the beer you made?

2. What date was your smackpack stamped with?

Thanks for all of the advice fellas it seems like getting a flask needs to be part of my brewing compliment. The beer had a starting gravity of 1.065 and ended with a 1.011. Which seems ok but I would definitely like it to start getting up a little faster.