you guys are killing me
I can't catch a break on my search for the elusive banana...
Well here is what happened. I brewed my hefe and chilled to 80-90ish...I say "ish" because my kettle thermometer read 80, IR thermometer reads 90 pointed at the wort surface. IR reads about 80 pointed at the kettle outside. So somewhere in that range is the true temps...perhaps even a little higher.
My keg is in the fridge, probably in the mid 30s? Yeast should be sleeping nicely. I open the keg and pour bout 2 gallons in. The stick thermometer strip on the keg jumps right up to 86+ but not quite 90. Quite the temperature shock. But the extra package I have of that yeast, Munich Classic, states rehydrate in warm water...temp range up to 92'. So I'm hopefully I didn't kill the yeast cake.
About 20 hours later, I'm observing no activity on the blowoff tube. Getting very concerned I shock killed the yeast. I open the keg and there is only a slight layer of "foam" that really looks more like aeration than krausen or anything else. Basically looks like it did when I dumped all the wort in, just residual air bubbles from aeration.
So I grab a Munich Classic yeast harvest out of my fridge, a few months old. Half pint mason jar with a good 1" think yeast cake. I decanted a bit, swirled it up and pitched half the cake, about 1/2" of yeast. Within 4 hours I have activity, followed by krausen blowing out the tube (expected) and 24 hours later it's down to a slow bubble like it's almost done.
So did the new pitch kick off nice an quick....or was my original dump on the yeast cake "just" starting to take off and I just didn't give it a chance? And thus I "super-charged" the fermentation with a second, unnecessary pitch?