Co-worker's first batch

It sounds like he did pretty good. My only comment would be that he should have waited for things to cool more before pitching the yeast. I typically wait until the temperature is below 85 F. If it went a whole week before bubbling, it is possible that much of the yeast got killed by the high temperatures, and it just took a week for the survivors to replicate enough times to begin serious fermentation. Either that, or he didn't pitch enough yeast. It sometimes helps to use two packets of yeast instead of one. It is also possible that it could be bacteria. The only way to find out for sure is to wait about a week now and then open it up, smell it, taste it. If bacteria have gotten in there it will be utterly nasty stuff. It could taste like vomit or worse. Hopefully it will taste just like a good beer and everything will be fine. I'm guessing the yeast just got off to a late start, either because of high temperature or not enough yeast cells pitched. Time will tell.

There's nothing wrong with it, he just forgot to aerate the chilled wort for the yeast to get a good strong fermentation going from the beginning.

-gcitagh

Thank you for such a quick response, he'll be happy to know that there's nothing wrong with it. Should he aerate it any more, or is what been done sufficient?

No, don't aerate it anymore! If it is bubbling then it's fine. At this stage of fermentation, aeration could oxidize the beer and make it taste like crap. Just let it run its course, everything should be okay.

If he pitched the yeast into 110F wort, then he may well have killed his yeast.

I thought that too, but like I mentioned in the original posting - he called and said that the airlock is "bubbling slightly, at a rate of approximately

Has the yeast somehow reactivated, or did the hot wort (in a sense) steal the oxygen that was introduced from the aeration, and since he opened the lid it allowed more oxygen to be supplied?

Well, it's up to you. It'll get the job done this way, but will take longer and thus a higher chance of infection. On the other hand, opening the lid introducing oxygen and sloshing it around with the lid back on also increases the chances of infection. If it's really annoying about how slow it's going I'd go ahead and open the lid to get more oxygen in there; also make sure that the air is free of dust and smoke. If yeast is cheap, your friend could prepare a small yeast starter of corn sugar and warm water to repitch the yeast or could take some of the wort stuff in the fermentor adding sugar and beating it with an egg whippet and letting that rest until it foams up good and pitching that back into the fermentor. Another thing would be to warm the fermentor with a heat pad near the bottom on the side. This could be due to it being too cold. Hope all is well,

-gcitagh

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 20:07:12 -0600, "Stone-ok" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

The hot wort may well have killed the yeast and what he's seeing now may well be bacterial or wild yeast action. Also, pitching dry yeast into wort isn't the healthiest thing for the yeast - it should be rehydrated first.

Pitching ale yeast should be done at around 68 degrees - certainly no higher than 70 degrees - that's getting into "off flavor" range.

The only thing he can do now is let it ferment out and taste it when it's done. It may surprise us all and turn out very good.

It sounds like he just killed some of the yeast to me and it has taken a while for the remaining live yeast to build up enough force to actually make enough of a difference. It sounds fine. This Odor your talking about.. have you smelt it? I remember my first batch because of the strange smell I thought it was off..