Incredibly fast start to fermentation

[guypettigrew]

Usually my beers take overnight or longer to show signs of fermentation starting. After 24 hours there's usually a good yeast head and all goes well.

The yeast is almost always a rinsed White Labs yeast which has been in the 'fridge for anything between a fortnight and 3 months.

Today has been different!

Yesterday afternoon I racked a beer into a King Keg and rinsed the yeast (White Labs 001) into a sanitised pint glass and covered it with cling film. It went into my beer storage shed at about 12C for 24 hours and I re-used it in a 1.054 bitter which I brewed today. The whole pint of yeast was poured into the wort at about 25C.

Good grief!!!!

After 2 hours there was very clear evidence of fermentation and, after 4 hours, it looked like the photo below.

If only this would happen every time. Perhaps I should start planning out how to do consecutive brews?

Guy

[oz11]

A quick start isn't always necessarily a good thing. The yeast does some important work in the lag phase producing pre-cursors to esters and other flavour compounds. I don't have the yeast book to hand at the moment, but that explains it better than I can. It depends what you are looking for in your beer

[guypettigrew]

Oh. Is this going to be a rubbish brew, then?

Guy

[oz11]

No, not at all, it's just another thing to consider in the wonderful world that is yeast

It's more for balance so that any (less experienced) brewers reading it don't get worried if they have a 24h lag phase without any signs of fermentation and start chucking more yeast in.

[mozza]

That's one epic batch of yeasties!