Fermentation

[Ckrasen]

So I brewed a belgian saison last Friday. It's a five gallon batch with an OG of 1.050. I used two packets of Danstar (rehydrated) dry yeast. How long do you guys think I should let it ferment? I don't plan on racking to secondary. I'm thinking about 3 weeks. Let me know! Thanks.

 

[tagz]

Two packets of dry yeast will tear through that sucker in a couple days. Three weeks is more than safe. You over pitched a bit so you might not have as many esters as you were looking for.

 

[jaydlaw]

1 pack would have it fermented in a 5-10 days.

 

[Ckrasen]

I figured I may have over pitched. I under pitched on my last one due to dead yeast cells so I wanted to be sure this time. Oh well...

So it's been a week now...

Do you guys think it would benefit more from racking to secondary/going ahead and bottling or from just keeping it sitting on that yeast for another week?

 

[kombat]

I'd leave it undisturbed for 3 weeks, then go straight to bottling. No need to secondary this beer. And FWIW, overpitching is far better than underpitching, in my opinion.

 

[tagz]

You should check the gravity but I'm sure you're fine to bottle at ~10 days.

 

[eadavis80]

Rack, if you want to rack after 2 weeks. If not, let it sit in primary for 3 and then bottle.

 

[Ckrasen]

Hey everybody,

I just checked the gravity. OG was 1.050...after 16 days, it read 1.004. I was thinking about throwing in some raspberry/blackberry puree into a secondary and putting the saison on top of that for a few days. What do you guys think?

 

[eadavis80]

Go nuts - you'll get a legit secondary fermentation when you rack on the puree so just make sure you have some headspace and/or a blowoff tube ready.

 

[Ckrasen]

I was also thinking about putting only one gallon of the five into a one gallon carboy (on top of the puree) and keeping the other 4 in primary for the remainder of the week. But now I am second guessing that due to possible oxygenation issues...do you think it would be better to just go ahead and bottle the 4 gallons?

 

[eadavis80]

I see no problem in splitting up the batch. Just be sure you use the proper amount of puree for the 1-gallon batch. It's sometimes fun to get multiple beers out of the same original beer.