ok all, I need some good education on this... I brewed up a batch of Kolsch on Friday the 19th. For yeast I used a harvested WL029 from a light cream ale. The harvest consisted of 3 mason quart jars containing approximately 3/8 inch yeast layer in each jar. This would give me just over an inch of yeast to pitch. My intent was to ferment this at 59-60F which I had read on this forum was a great temp to ferment Kolsch at. I figured with this much yeast I could bypass the starter. The yeast was a month old. At pitching time, my wort was at 55F, my yeast was 58F. I figured this would allow the yeast and wort to come up to my planned fermentation temp. For all three jars, I decanted off until the yeast got to the mouth of the jar. This left me with just enough liquid in each jar enabling a swirl and pitch. On the morning of the 22nd, the temp of the wort was at 59F and nothing was happenning in my 30 liter carboy. The s-bubbler's liquid level hadn't budged. I went to White Labs web site and it said this yeast needs to be in the mid 60's to optimally ferment. So I warmed it to 64F and it began taking off. I am now holding it at 65F and it's chomping away happily with a nice sized krausen on top. How are you all able to ferment this yeast colder? Did I need to have more than an inch of yeast to do this? At the colder temp I still should have gotten a good krausen shouldn't have I? Or should I have taken a couple liters of the wort, placed it in a flask and then added the yeast to that in order to get it going at the lower temp? Then pitch into the remainder of the wort?? As usual any and all advise is always appreciated from this group. cheers!!
... Needed to add here that the starting gravity of the kolsch was 12.5BRIX or 1.050....