What's the damage?

[flytrapxx]

First off, this site rocks as well as all of you in what appears to be an infinite wisdom on home brewing. I also want to say hello to everyone and let you know this is my first post. I've been led to this site loads and loads of times via google searches and figured it was about time I got myself a username and joined up. Most times the forums have answered my questions so apologies if this has already been answered somewhere here but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Early apologies for the length of this. I did it on purpose, ya know, so you could grab one of your home brews and sit back while you give this a read.

That being said, I recently brewed my third batch. I've done a nut brown, Irish red and now the lawnmower de saison kit from Midwest. The first two were easy brews - went great. I learned a couple hinges from my brown to improve on with the Irish. So I thought I'd expand a bit and try something slightly more challenging (for me) with the saison. I had the kit about a month or so before brewing, white labs wit yeast (WLP400) in the fridge of course. Come brew day on March 1st, I let the yeast come to around 70°, cooled my wort to around 72°, shook my yeast well and heard a pssshhh when I opened it and then pitched. And waited. And waited. For two days I waited with no activity seen in the carbon or airlock. I know neither are definitive measures of fermentation but since my OG was .044 and the recipe said it was supposed to be 0.58. Well, I didn't bother measuring because something appeared awry before the yeast even went in. I talked to a a couple friends who've been brewing for a long time an they suggested I repitch. Now, I can come up with multiple reasons (might not be good ones) as to why I didn't repitch the exact same yeast that came with my kit, but I'll spare you. Ended up rehydrating a Safale US-05 (relatively "neutral" from what I've read) and tossed it in. Later that night it took off quite well. So well that in a couple days the krausen hit my airlock. I know the Belgian yeasts can be fairly aggressive little suckers but didn't know this about a neutral yeast. Soooo, here come the questions (go grab another homebrew):

1) did I not give my White Labs enough time and it DID eventually kick in and in combination with the Safale cause the bigger than usual krausen? I suppose there's no way to tell which yeast started working, but nothing appeared to be working before adding the Safale.
2) do you think is batch is a lost cause having two different strains in it?
3) anything different I could have done or that you'd recommend?

Maybe I should've waited longer but I felt that I'd be royally screwing up the batch just letting the wort sit there all lonely like in the carboy. Now, I'm second guessing myself and wondered if I botched it going the route I did. Any comments, advice, or criticism is welcome folks. Go!

Btw, nice to meet you all. The name's Travis.

 

[Beernik]

1) 48 hours isn't unusual to wait for airlock activity. That lag time can be shortened by pitching yeasts starters and good aeration.

Saison can be a very aggressive yeast. If your beer starts pushing krausen through the airlock, you need to use a blowoff tube. If you have a bucket, you can force a siphon hose into the rubber grommet or force it over the center hole in a three piece airlock.

2) It will be beer. I don't know how much saison character it will have with two yeast strains. One will likely dominate, but I don't know which one will.

3) Take a gravity reading. Pitch more of the same yeast.

 

[HefeHood]

Travis, What Beernik said. +1

All is good. Bottle or keg this brew when the gravity is constant over a few days and enjoy. No harm or foul. Make yourself some notes...what went good\bad...live and learn.

Relax and have another home-brew.

 

[flytrapxx]

1) 48 hours isn't unusual to wait for airlock activity. That lag time can be shortened by pitching yeasts starters and good aeration.

Saison can be a very aggressive yeast. If your beer starts pushing krausen through the airlock, you need to use a blowoff tube. If you have a bucket, you can force a siphon hose into the rubber grommet or force it over the center hole in a three piece airlock.

2) It will be beer. I don't know how much saison character it will have with two yeast strains. One will likely dominate, but I don't know which one will.

3) Take a gravity reading. Pitch more of the same yeast.

Travis, What Beernik said. +1

All is good. Bottle or keg this brew when the gravity is constant over a few days and enjoy. No harm or foul. Make yourself some notes...what went good\bad...live and learn.

Relax and have another home-brew.

Thanks a lot Beernik and HefeHood. Both good advice. I realized kinda after the fact that I should've used a starter. Can they be used for lower gravity beers as well? I also originally had a blowoff hose on my carboy but after not seeing any activity for what felt like forever I removed it thinking perhaps it wasn't a tight fit and my gases were escaping. Anyway, hopefully like you said it will be at least drinkable. I guess if someone asks what I'm brewing I'll just have to tell them that it's a mystery and ask if they want to be my guinea pig.

Thanks!

 

[Beernik]

Sure, no problem.

Experimentation and mistakes are the ways great beer is made. Of course, they are also the ways bad beer is made.

I like to use brewers friend for calculating pitch rates. A lot of people on here use Mr. Malty.

I never worried about proper pitch rates until I made a diacetyl bomb out of a bock beer. Then I thought, "Maybe I should pay more attention to this."

The calculator will tell you what size starter you need based upon the OG and volume of the beer you are brewing. Unless you are doing small batches, you probably always need a starter for proper pitching rates.

On the other hand, there may be specific reasons for underpitching. Hefe's and Belgian beers can give better ester profiles with underpitching.

 

[flytrapxx]

Sure, no problem.

Experimentation and mistakes are the ways great beer is made. Of course, they are also the ways bad beer is made.

I like to use brewers friend for calculating pitch rates. A lot of people on here use Mr. Malty.

I never worried about proper pitch rates until I made a diacetyl bomb out of a bock beer. Then I thought, "Maybe I should pay more attention to this."

The calculator will tell you what size starter you need based upon the OG and volume of the beer you are brewing. Unless you are doing small batches, you probably always need a starter for proper pitching rates.

On the other hand, there may be specific reasons for underpitching. Hefe's and Belgian beers can give better ester profiles with underpitching.

Gonna hound you yet again Beernik, with a newbie question. So I went to the brewersfriend.com site for the pitching rate calculator and noticed the batch size defaulted to 5.5 gallons. I've seen other calculators that have been 5.5 or 5.25. Where is the extra .25 or .5 coming from on a typical 5 gallon batch? I know I can just type in 5 gallons, but the fact that I've seen these slightly higher than 5 gallon numbers on other calculators gets me curious. And thanks again.

Travis

 

[d2xx]

Alot of people put 5.5 gallons into the fermenter so when the beer is done with fermentation you still get 5 gallons without pulling any of the trub into either your bottling bucket or keg.

 

[flytrapxx]

Alot of people put 5.5 gallons into the fermenter so when the beer is done with fermentation you still get 5 gallons without pulling any of the trub into either your bottling bucket or keg.

Gotcha. Thanks! So you mean just top up to 5.5 gallons with water, right?

 

[Beernik]

You can top up to 5.5 gallons, but you dilute you recipe. If you have a 5 gallon recipe, you want to adjust it up to 5.5 gallons so you maintain the same OG and IBU.

The downside of doing a 5.5 gallon batch is losing headspace in your bucket. It makes the need for a blowoff hose greater.

 

[pharaohpierre]

There's nothing wrong with pitching 2 different yeasts as far as producing beer, sure you won't get the flavor your looking for but it won't be 'bad beer.' That's how we cultivated yeast to begin with, brewers would just combine yeasts and put pressure on them to create certain characteristics.

Never-the-less, I agree that next time you should aerate the beer some, create a starter if you can, and if nothing happens after 48 hours, give it a day or two then then repitch.

You should continue as normal and see how the beer turns, let us know.

 

[flytrapxx]

There's nothing wrong with pitching 2 different yeasts as far as producing beer, sure you won't get the flavor your looking for but it won't be 'bad beer.' That's how we cultivated yeast to begin with, brewers would just combine yeasts and put pressure on them to create certain characteristics.

Never-the-less, I agree that next time you should aerate the beer some, create a starter if you can, and if nothing happens after 48 hours, give it a day or two then then repitch.

You should continue as normal and see how the beer turns, let us know.

Thanks for this information. The plan was to proceed as normal and cross my fingers. I'll let you all know when I try it. Gonna be awhile though...