LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME! GIVE MY CREATION … LIIIIIFE!

Last time I used this particular strain of yeast it took a little more than twenty-four hours for fermentation to kick in. This time it took almost fifty-four, and I had to baby it.

I thought it might be too cold in the basement for fire-and-forget fermentation. I was right. After twenty-four hours passed, I tried mixing the wort up by rolling the carboy across the top of the work bench. When that didn’t get any results, I put the carboy in the basement sink this morning and filled the basin with warm water, about eighty degrees, and left it there all day.

When I checked it after work there were the faintest wisps of foam gathering on the head of the wort. Success! I warmed up the water in the sink and, by bedtime, there was a frothy head of kreusen building at the top of the carboy. *bliss!*

I’m going to leave it in the sink all night to keep up the temp in the carboy. It’ll be one hell of a mess in the morning with no blow-off tube to let the foam out, but I can just hose it off and by then fermentation will be going strong.