Simple Saison

Just looking for some thoughts if anyone has any to help this brew out. Doing a Saison with 3724.

I’ve got a yeast prop going with some dunkel wort (not my first choice obviously but just how the schedule worked out) that should be about 10% of the total final volume. The dunkel has some munich malt in it already (about 10% of grist), which is fine, but also has a little bit of caramel malts (probably 5%).

So with that in mind, here is what I worked up.

85% Weyermann Pilsner
8% Weyermann Wheat Pale
7% Refined Cane Sugar

Normally I’d leave the sugar out, but with the caramel malts, I guess I just thought it would help to dry it out some more.

Thinking I’ll add some citric acid to lower the mash pH. Any other salts that are important in saison brewing?

I don’t know what I’m doing about hops. I have some Hallertauer Tradition, Spalt Select, and Aurora that I think might be useful. Also have Glacier and Crystal if those might be any use.

Aiming for about 16 plato, planning on fermenting in the low to mid 80s. Does anyone have any thoughts about how long the primary has to stay this warm? Our basement cellar is still pretty cool despite these past few 85 degree days, and once the initially active fermentation slows, I’m concerned it will cool down too much.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

Just my $0.02, as long as you’re not trying to clone something specific, I think that could be a fine grain bill, Dunkel wort at all (which might add some complexity.) If your caramel malt is 5% of that 10% (i.e. 0.5% of total wort) then I don’t think you have to add sugar... but there’s nothing wrong with it, either.

What yeast strain? IMO a lot of people buy too much into the warm temp thing, but it depends on the strain.

Wyeast 3724 is the Dupont yeast strain.

The Hallertauer and/or Spalt hops would be great choices.

Originally posted by JoeinEscazú
Just my $0.02, as long as you’re not trying to clone something specific, I think that could be a fine grain bill, Dunkel wort at all (which might add some complexity.) If your caramel malt is 5% of that 10% (i.e. 0.5% of total wort) then I don’t think you have to add sugar... but there’s nothing wrong with it, either.

I hate 3724...its a PITA to work with. You kind of need a late round of heat for that yeast to finish. If its not too late, I highly recommend the French Saison yeast over 3724.

3724 can be tough. In my experience as long as you can hold your temp above 65 you should be fine. Keep rousing the yeast to aid in fermentation, and plan on this yeast taking over a week to fully ferment your wort. You could make any of those hops work in a Saison, it really depends on what flavor and aroma you are looking for. If you mash in the high 140’s you won’t need the sugar to dry out your beer, if you mash in the 150’s I would then use the sugar.

Originally posted by Gription79
3724 can be tough. In my experience as long as you can hold your temp above 65 you should be fine. Keep rousing the yeast to aid in fermentation, and plan on this yeast taking over a week to fully ferment your wort. You could make any of those hops work in a Saison, it really depends on what flavor and aroma you are looking for. If you mash in the high 140’s you won’t need the sugar to dry out your beer, if you mash in the 150’s I would then use the sugar.

So what sort of hopping schedule does every like to shoot for in their saisons? I ended up making this pretty hoppy I think, hoping not too hoppy but everything was heavy on the back end so should be much more flavor than bittering.

If I scale back to 5gal, my hopping schedule looked something like this.

1/8oz 8% Spalt Select at boil
1/4oz 8% Spalt Select at 15
1.7oz 8% Spalt Select at flameout

I calculated that I should be around 35-40 IBU depending on my utilization.

This is according to the formulas we use at work, IBU calculation is something I still don’t understand as BeerSmith gives me totally different numbers and most every place I look says 0 utilization at end of boil, but we calculate 12-15%.

By the way, I ended up using the sugar mostly because I wanted to add a little more volume, everything went smoothly hit 15 plato, 85 degrees into the fermenter, will check in a little while and hopefully see some action.

Originally posted by lithy
By the way, I ended up using the sugar mostly because I wanted to add a little more volume, everything went smoothly hit 15 plato, 85 degrees into the fermenter, will check in a little while and hopefully see some action.