Change in Plans

So I decided not to brew Jennifer's Cherry Wheat yesterday. Instead I went ahead and brewed up my American IPA. MMMM, hoppy goodness!

Here's the rundown on the ingredients:

• 8 oz. of Crystal 120L


• 4 oz. of Crystal 40L


• 2 oz. Flaked Wheat


• 5.5 lbs of Extra Pale DME


• 3.3 lbs of Pale LME


• 1 oz of Summit at 60 min


• .5 oz. of Cascade at 20 min


• .5 oz. of Centennial at 20 min


• .25 oz. of Centennial at 10 min
  
• .5 oz of Cascade at 7 min


• .25 oz of Centennial at 5 min


• The zest of 2 oranges at 5 min
  
• 1 package of Wyeast American Ale II

What a smell from those oranges when I was zesting them. It was absolutely awesome. One glitch in the process. It's been about 24 hours now, and I hadn't seen any activity in the primary fermenter. It's not that big of a deal yet, but if it goes a couple more days, I'm gonna have to run out and get some more yeast. Here's the process of anything I could think of that may have caused this.

1. I smacked the "Smack Pack" the day before brewing, but for some reason decided to put it back in the fridge after reading the pack and seeing to do that 3 hours before using. I let the pack re-warm up for at least 3 hours before pitching.
   
2. I just used my new wort chiller for the first time. It's awesome! It cooled my entire brew in about 10 minutes. Once I got the temp to around 90 degrees F, I dumped the wort into the fermenter and topped off with cool water. I assumed there was no way the temp of the brew could possibly still be above 90 after topping off, so I pitched the yeast pack.
   
3. Wanting to maintain proper fermentation temperatures, I placed the fermenter in a chest cooler and filled the cooler with some frozen water bottles and cool water. When I checked the temperature of the water in the cooler, it was slightly less than 60 degrees. Not too cold for the yeast, but maybe a bit cool?

So all three of those things may have contributed to a slow start, or maybe even a non-start. I don't know yet. I promise not to worry too much.

For some eye candy, here's a shot of my Irish Red while out camping.