Stop The Presses...

This morning I woke up to clean out the fermenter that had #12 in it and low and behold it had a nice white foamy ring around the inside of it. It also still had those pesky small colonies in the middle. So at 10am I called the great guys over at Northern Brewer today to get some clarification on my brew problem. Apparently the smack pack had not been incubated long enough. According to Wyeast for every month over the culture date, you should give the pack an extra 24 hrs. So technically we shouldn't have brewed until about today in order to see how much the pack would swell. Brew Dude told me that a 72 hour lag is not uncommon for older yeasts to get started and that I could taste it after racking into the secondary and make sure to leave the last 12oz in it so that if it in fact is mold colonies that they would float on top and not settle. He also said if the yeast kicks up enough it could overwhelm the mold and still give a good beer, but if it tastes funky when racked especially since racking is done from the bottom up, "it's over". But for now we have gone from one bubble every minute or so to one every 6 or 7 secs. GAME ON!!!!