Twelve hours later and no activity at all. The yeast seems to be completely inactive. First time that’s ever happened to me.

UPDATE: 6:28 pm – False alarm. The beer’s okay. I was a little worried that I did something that would have killed the yeast, and I’ve spent the whole day going over and over every step of the process trying to figure out where I bungled it, but never did get to that eureka moment when I realized what I’d done wrong.

When I got home from work I went straight to the basement where I was sure that, if I frowned at the beer long enough, it would give up its secret, and what the hell, it did. It had a great big head of suds on it, and the blowoff tube was blooping happily. It was just a slow starter, apparently.