I’ve got a lager in the fermentation chamber that will just not take off and start fermenting. I’m not a rookie brewer. I have lots of brews under my belt and have never had a failure until now and I don’t know what’s going on.
The beer is a 5 gallon schwarzbier with an OG of 1.058 that was brewed last Sunday. I made a 5 liter starter of Wyeast 2206. The starter was overbuilt to allow me to harvest ~200 billion cells for future use. I cold crashed the starter upon completion and pulled it out of the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to pitching and decanted the beer. The yeast was then pitched into 50° wort and it’s been sitting there for a week with no activity.
I think about Thursday I checked on it, and nothing was going on, so I took a gravity reading and it hasn’t changed. At that point, I shook the fermentor to re aerate the wort and pitched the additional yeast I saved from the starter. This morning, still no activity. Currently, I’m letting the fermentor warm to 55° to see if that will kick off fermentation. Additionally, I checked the pH of the wort and it’s perfect, at 5.2. I just don’t know what could have gone wrong. I know there’s no infection, or bacteria, or wild yeast, because absolutely nothing is happening in the wort. I’m all out of ideas, anyone else have any?
The beer is a 5 gallon schwarzbier with an OG of 1.058 that was brewed last Sunday. I made a 5 liter starter of Wyeast 2206. The starter was overbuilt to allow me to harvest ~200 billion cells for future use. I cold crashed the starter upon completion and pulled it out of the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to pitching and decanted the beer. The yeast was then pitched into 50° wort and it’s been sitting there for a week with no activity.
I think about Thursday I checked on it, and nothing was going on, so I took a gravity reading and it hasn’t changed. At that point, I shook the fermentor to re aerate the wort and pitched the additional yeast I saved from the starter. This morning, still no activity. Currently, I’m letting the fermentor warm to 55° to see if that will kick off fermentation. Additionally, I checked the pH of the wort and it’s perfect, at 5.2. I just don’t know what could have gone wrong. I know there’s no infection, or bacteria, or wild yeast, because absolutely nothing is happening in the wort. I’m all out of ideas, anyone else have any?