96-hour Lag Time

[Elbone]

Brewed a Dortmunder this past Sunday. Mashed , boiled, chilled to 10C, oxygenated at 1L/min. for 60 seconds and pitched 1/2 L of slurry (WLP840) that I'd had stored under beer at 5C for about 3 weeks. I repitch often and the beer his pitch was saved from was absolutely clean and delicious (it's already nearly gone!) No sign whatsoever of fermentation until yesterday afternoon- a full 4 DAYS later. I had planned to dump it but just hadn't gotten around to it yet. The fermentation looks normal and healthy for a lager and the smell from the airlock seems clean and normal. Anyone ever had a lag-time that long? How'd the beer turn out?

[dmtaylor]

I've never experienced a lag time that long, or should I say, never let it go that long without pitching more yeast. When I've experienced lag times of 48 hours or thereabouts, sometimes the beer was fine, but more often it had off-flavors such as acetaldehyde, vomit, or turpentine flavors. So now I never let it go more than ~30 hours before pitching more yeast if necessary. But even that hasn't usually been necessary for a while since I've started making bigger yeast starters.

[Pharmbrewer]

I just put together my oktoberfest using the wyeast 2124 and it was a real slow starter. It took 24 hours on a stir plate before it even started to show a krausen. When I pitched it took almost 36 hours to show any signs of fermentation. while this is not quite 96 hours part of it could be the longer lag times of lagers in general. At least your chances of infection are small at lager temps so it might be ok.

PB