I made the mistake of not following up on instructions so when I bottled my 5 gallon batch of pale ale, I stored it in my laundry closet for the first 36 hours. The laundry closet has been at about 50 degrees during this span. Then I re-read the directions and saw that it should be in a room temperature dark place, not a cool dark place.
I have since moved to my bedroom closet which will be 68-70 degrees.
How much damage have I done? Will it still carbonate - in other words will the yeast come back from that chilly state and feed on that priming sugar?
It should still carbonate, but you may want to roll each bottle around individually to get the yeast back into suspension: if it sat cold and all your yeast fell out of suspension, its going to be a necessary step to get it going again
Right but we work hard to wake it up from its quiescent state before or while we use it. Te bottle rolling method came to me here from morticaixavier a couple years ago when I had the same fears. I usually do it for most of my batches just to make sure the yeasties keep working. Necessary, probably not. reassuring and not very time consuming, yes. Just a little insurance and in theory should help speed the process. Give them the best possible environment. Just my .02
I think it’s a fine idea. I was addressing the underlying idea that maybe the cooler temp might be detrimental to the yeast. I bet they are fine. I’ve cold crashed to 30F and gell fined before bottle conditioning and saw no carbonation problems, so 50 ought to be OK
I rolled those bottles gently to wake the sediment up on the bottom of the bottle. I can actually see carbonation already beginning in most all bottles. Thanks for the advice!