S-04 not starting

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Blinky

Blinky

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I'm making a 70/80 schilling ale and on Saturday afternoon pitched a pack of S-04 into my 1041 wort that had been chilled to 19 degrees. The brew fridge was also siting at 18 degrees..... This morning I still have no activity on the airlock, there is no pressure in the FV, no bubbling of airlock nada! Should I nip out this lunchtime and buy another pack and pitch it tonight? I also upped the fridge temp to 20 degrees to see if that will help, never had a yeast take this long to get started before!
I did use a crushed Camden tablet in my mash water but also a few kettles of boiling water to bring the temp up to 77 after the mash was complete so would not have thought would have been a problem.....
Maybe I should draw off a sample tonight and see if the gravity is dropping.
 
Have you looked inside the FV? Lack of bubbling doesn't necessarily mean it hasn't started, the gas could be escaping around the lid seal or the grommet holding the airlock - this happens to me occasionally.

Also, one of the S- yeasts is quite slow to start, can't remember if it's S-04 or S-05, although I put an S-05 on Sat and it was bubbling by Sun morning. Did you re-hydrate the yeast? Mine was climbing out of the re-hydration cup before I pitched.
 
Did not rehydrate but I did peek inside - not sure what I was looking for but it did seem to be foaming and fizzing slightly. Maybe it is the seal, had this problem last time but the seal was not clicked on properly, double checked this time but maybe its esacping somewhere else.
If I check the gravity tonight, will it have gone down by a few points in the past couple of days or will the drop not be that noticeable?
 
It's very unusual for a dried yeast not to work. Was there any foam on top of the beer when you looked? Even if not that doesn't mean there is no fermentation. The only way is to take a gravity reading. S04 in my experience is very quick so you should definitely see a lower gravity by now.
 
Proper rehydration (water temperature according to data sheet, and ratio yeast:water at 1:10) is very important, even though top fermenting yeast (such as S-04) is a bit more forgiving than lager yeast. If you simply sprinkle the yeast on top of the wort, about 50% of your yeast cells will die (White/Zainasheff, Yeast) because the cells can't handle what passes through the membranes during rehydration, and the high osmotic pressure of the wort is simply too much for them.

In addition to darrellm's tips, I would also like to ask how your yeast package was stored and whether is was beyond its shelf life (if fermentation has indeed not started; edit: sounds like it has).
 
Last edited:
Blinky said:
Did not rehydrate but I did peek inside - not sure what I was looking for but it did seem to be foaming and fizzing slightly.
Click to expand...

That sounds to me like it is going, it would be flat as a pancake if it wasn't :thumb:

Try not to fiddle with it, you could drop a hyrdometer in but there's a lot of wild yeast and fruit flies around this time of year which can cause infections, so the less messing the better. Just leave it for 14 days and test it then,
 
Was thinking I could draw a sample off from the tap on the fv, that way I'm not opening the lid again
 
Be careful with taking a sample from the tap. The remaining residues on/in the tap can attract all sorts of things that you do not want in your beer.

If you take a sample from the tap, try to be very thorough with cleaning and sanitising it afterwards.
 

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