On Sunday, I brewed a batch of American Honey Wheat using a extract recipe and crushed grains and malt in muslin bag. Cooled wort to about 88°and pitched Safale WB-05. Airlock bubbled for a few hours and stopped. I tried to jump start it with 1/2 tablespoon of Red Star dry yeast to restart the process to no avail. I never had this happen before. What can I do to restart this process without giving the brew an overly yeasty taste? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
88 is such a high temperature the fermentation is likely finished. It goes very quickly like that, and frankly won’t make great beer. In the future try to get your temp down into the mid 60s before pitching yeast.
So, basically, I killed it. Is there anyway to restart it?
Not saying you killed it. Just that it might be done fermenting already at that temp. Only way to tell is by taking hydrometer reading to verify.
Nope, you didn’t kill it unless the temp got over 115F. It just worked very quickly. If you take a gravity reading, I think you’ll see it’s fermented out. That explains why you can’t restart it…there’s nothing left to ferment.