Saison yeast not started yet, and I split the brew.

[Alex.mc]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I brewed a Geterbrewed Marching Saison all grain kit.
All went well, and inspired by a recipe on here, at the last 10 mins of boil I quickly lifted out 4 litres from the 21 or so...... Lobbed it in my small boil stockpot and continued the boil with the addition of Lemon peel and Basil leaves.

So..... 16-17 litres of normal Saison, 4 litres Lemon and Basil Saison.
I have some 0.1g jewellery scales, so I calculated the percentages and split the supplied 10g pack of Mangrove jacks yeast appropriately and when the worts were cooled pitched dry last night at about 8pm.

I just checked now at 6.30am, so 9.30 hours elapsed(room at 21c) and no action apparent?

Am I just being impatient? Or have I understood yeast addition wrong? Is yeast addition purely pro-rata, or are there minimal blocks or quantities needed to get going?
Should I source some more yeast and pitch? Or will it get going in a while?

 

[MickDundee]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I brewed a Geterbrewed Marching Saison all grain kit.
All went well, and inspired by a recipe on here, at the last 10 mins of boil I quickly lifted out 4 litres from the 21 or so...... Lobbed it in my small boil stockpot and continued the boil with the addition of Lemon peel and Basil leaves.

So..... 16-17 litres of normal Saison, 4 litres Lemon and Basil Saison.
I have some 0.1g jewellery scales, so I calculated the percentages and split the supplied 10g pack of Mangrove jacks yeast appropriately and when the worts were cooled pitched dry last night at about 8pm.

I just checked now at 6.30am, so 9.30 hours elapsed(room at 21c) and no action apparent?

Am I just being impatient? Or have I understood yeast addition wrong? Is yeast addition purely pro-rata, or are there minimal blocks or quantities needed to get going?
Should I source some more yeast and pitch? Or will it get going in a while?

If you just pitched directly to the wort (rather than hydrating the yeast) it can take 24 hours or so for the yeast to “take off”. The yeast has to rehydrate in the wort (which can kill a fair few yeast cells) then build up its cell count again to get itself going. Perfectly normal.

MJ yeast also seems to take a bit longer than some of the others to get going but once it does it’s great!

 

[Alex.mc]

It appears to be starting now.... Bubbles appearing around the perimeter.
It's in a glass fermenter, so easy to see what's happening.

The last few yeasts I've pitched have gone wild within a short period, so maybe I was just automatically expecting the same?

 

[Ben2083]

I'm thinking of having a play around with some different flavours in a Saison soon by splitting a boil, I'd be interested to hear how the lemon and basil turns out and what sort of amounta of additions you used in your 4 litres?

 

[Alex.mc]

Well the original recipe on here somewhere, was for 2 gallons I think. In the end I grated the zest of one lemon, and put about 6/7 fresh basil leaves in for the final 10 mins. It took about 10 mins for the wort to come back up to the boil. Then switched off and dropped the whole stockpot in the sink and let it cool in a sink full of water for about 25 mins. Then I strained the wort into the fermenter and removed the bits. I'm wondering now if I should have left the bits in during fermentation though? We shall see how it turns out.

 

[Alex.mc]

Both worts are vigorously working now btw!