[MattyAHA]

Yesterday i brewed a boston lager clone, i chilled the beer to about 50 and pitched. the temp has been steady, im using wyeast 2124 starter and too my surprise there was a krausen forming at 27 hours after pitching. i heard that lagers can take 48-72 hours to get going. is this a good or bad sign? excuse me im not the most seasoned brewers esp with lagers

[Robert]

I pitch 2124 (W-34/70) at 50°F and expect it to be in kräusen in ~24 hours, and fermented out in ~7 days.  I'd be more worried about those long lags and weeks-long fermentations I hear about with some homebrewers. Proper pitch rate, healthy yeast, adequate oxygen, and normal nutrient content in the wort, and you should expect what you're seeing. RDWHAHB.

[dls5492]

First of all, it looks like your lager will be fine.
Second, you came to the right place to learn. There are great people here that want to help you be a "seasoned" brewer.
To your health and prost!

[hopfenundmalz]

A pitch of a big viable starter will get it going faster. I brewed a Helles yesterday. It was fermenting nicely when I checked this morning.

Where did you read about those lag times?

[MattyAHA]

Right on thanks everyone. I can't remember where i heard that info about lag times maybe a false memory, but cheers everyone i'm striving to master this art of brewing and all your help is getting me closer

[majorvices]

I aim for a 12-24 hour lag on my lagers.

[klickitat jim]

If my simplistic understanding is correct, there is probably a difference between Lag Phase and Lag Time. It seems like a lot of home brewers use them as synonymous. If we are determining Lag Time to be the time from pitching until we see krausen or airlock activity, it's almost certain that at that point our yeast are actually well into Log Phase.

I pitch active starters, from smack pack to oxygenated no-stir starter to beer in 8-10 hrs usually. My pitch test is simple. I gently osilate the flask and look for foaming. If there's activity, it's ready. I almost always have visibly identifiable activity in the beer within 24 hrs. Sometimes 12hrs or less, sometimes up to 48hrs, depending on the yeast and gravity and temperature. The colder you ferment, the more CO2 it can retain, meaning the longer it takes before it's visible.

Frequently someone posts a question similar to : I pitched X Lager yeast starter to my 1.050 wort at 70F ambient. I checked it 48hrs later and there's no activity. Is my yeast dead? After several answers and suggestions, they check gravity and find that it's done fermenting at about day 3... Magic! They actually missed fermentation, it went so fast.

Visible activity, especially airlocks, are not very reliable at telling us what is actually going on. Check gravity before freaking out, if it's only been a few days.