Today we are tackling another common question we see especially from beginners. Your brewing your batch of beer and you add your yeast and then you realize it! You forgot to stir up your wort before you added your yeast.

Now before you freak out don’t worry, your beer is going to be good. 99% of the time the yeast will still do what it is meant to do and eat up all those sugars and give you some good beer.

So first I wanted to talk about why aerating is so important to your yeast. If you want to reverence this in detail go back and watch our video on the life cycle of a yeast and yeast management.

So what can happen when you do not aerate your wort is that it can lead to an off-flavor in your beer and create unwanted ester production early on. Plus your yeast can also have a slow start to the fermentation process.

However, sometimes these off-flavors can condition out over time. So, if you did forget to stir up your wort just let your beer condition at room temperature for a little longer. When you go to try it, just put one in the fridge and let it cool and see how that one tastes. Then you can tell if the rest need more conditioning or not.

Now one thing to note and why you will most likely be okay if you did not stir your wort.

In the instructions when we have you dump your wort into the fermenter and then dump in more cold water, that is aerating your beer. You will notice just by doing that you have foamy bubbles on top suggesting that your wort did get aeriated.

We tell you to mix to ensure that proper aeration has taken place and that the yeast is going to ferment well.

So if you forgot to stir your wort, you most likely got some aeration that you might not get any off-flavors in your beer.

That’s why it is always good to slow down on brew day and check off your steps as you go.

Cheers,

Robert