I just made it through the longest lag time I’ve personally faced with an ale to date. I decided to go with one vial of WLP002 for a stout I’m making and thought I might have pitched it at too low of a temp (60 F). I know the recommended range for this yeast is 64-68, which is why I chose it due to my basement temps, but I didn’t realize that it would take almost 36 hours to really show signs of activity.
After that long wait, I am happy to say the yeast are happy and doing what they do best at a comfy temperature of 64F.
One vial is not much yeast and pitching at 60 degrees is on the low side for WLP002.
I suspect the long lag time is a combination of not enough yeast and a low pitching temp.
Sounds like it doing fine now.
Just keep the temp steady as this yeast really doesn’t like temp swings.
I’ve never had a problem with using only one vile of any White Labs yeast before. Call me too laid back with my brewing, or too lazy to do anything extra, but I just pitch from the vile, or smack pack and always get great results. But you’re right, the temp was a little low when I pitched it. I had a lapse in concentration and forgot that good old Baltimore water is around 50 this time of year and let the wort chiller run a bit long
Yeah, that’s how I used to do it also.
I know that making a yeast starter is an extra step but I discovered that I had more consistent results when I started pitching a larger quantity of yeast.
You know the old saying “brewers make the wort, yeast make the beer”!
Yeah, thanks for the advice. I will look into making a starter for my next batch this weekend. It’s going to be the same type of yeast with the same cold temps. I keep insanely detailed notes, so I’ll be able to compare the difference.
There’s a website mrmalty.com that calculates appropriate pitching rates for your wort. I highly recommend making a starter for your beer as this will enable the yeast to go to battle with the proper amount of soldiers to get the job done in fruitful way (no pun intended). Another major consideration is proper aeration of your starter wort and your beer wort. With an appropriate starter that is aerated and pitched into an aerated wort at low temps you will be amazed at the results.
Fermenting at 60F is not bad at all. I’ve fermented many ales at that temp with great results. WLP002 likes to flocculate and clump relatively quickly but the that’s the beauty of that yeast.
I made a starter of WLP013 (London Ale) for my Chocolate Oatmeal Stout tomorrow. It really wasn’t as difficult as I was making myself believe
On a lighter note, I racked my Bourbon Stout, which was what the WLP002 went into, to secondary. What I was expecting to be a very strong ABV turned out (so far) to only be about 6.7%. I am guessing it may or may not get to 7% by the time I bottle.
