Making it to this thread way late, adding some thoughts on earlier posts and some advice below.
If you want something like bam, use the can you brew it bam clone grain bill. More ingredients than what I usualy use for a saison, but I've brewed it several times and it's damn good.
1) 3711 is gross. It should never be used for anything. The attenuation isn't a factor, brett can do plenty without dropping the gravity any. 3726 is hands down the best commercial saison strain. If HF doesn't use 3726, it's something very similar also cultured from Blaugies. No, I don't have a source for that info, but I'd bet dollars to donuts on it. I've never been that happy pitching dregs along with the primary yeast. I prefer to add in secondary or at bottling if the beer is dry enough. Adding JP dregs to an entirely fermented saison (or adjusting the priming sugar if it's still got a few points) at bottling is money. I don't have any experience with HF dregs. CS dregs tend to make an agressively acidic beer.
2) If aging on yeast contributes any flavors, they will be bad. If you've ever had a beer that tasted like wet cat food or spoiled meat, that's autolysis. I don't know where the idea that mixed ferment beers can't develop autolysis off flavors came from, but it's not true.
3) Depends. What kind of oak and what toast? What OG are you expecting? Assuming you are making 5.5 gallons at 1.047, I'd say between .25 and .5 oz for a medium toast french cube that has been boiled. Couple weeks or couple months, won't make a difference if you're not using much oak.
4) I would dry hop in secondary, when I add oak and the dregs if I was adding them to secondary rather than at bottling. Bam spends about two weeks in wood. Doesn't matter what you bitter with. Nelson is ok in a saison, but a subtle 1/2 oz citra addition is great. Crystal is nice, too.
5) Personally I'd skip the vienna and use some oats and maybe a little caramunich I, but that's just personal preference as is everything I've said other than 3711 being the devil's yeast. That's a fact.
Agree with everything, oak maybe a bit on the low end if you're not planning on going for more than 4 weeks or so. Liked for the fact that 3711 is garbage.
so how do you really feel?
1. everyone has their own likes/dislikes. I like 3711 as it plays well with Brett (though I have found I'm not a fan of 3711 in conjunction with Wyeast Brett Brux). I really like 3711 when Rye is a heavy % of the grain bill. if you're using HF dregs I would advise not using anything bottled from them over the last 6-9 months as they now use wine yeast for bottle conditioning. the wine yeast used is up for debate but I'm not liking some of the flavors I'm getting using recent HF bottle dregs... (some wine yeasts kill sacc yeasts)
2. autolysis is a major factor in clean beers, but luckily Brett and bacteria cleans up autolysis flavors.
3. I've had good luck numerous times with about 1oz of boiled and wine soaked medium toast cubes per 3gals. ymmv.
4. have never dry-hopped a saison so no input there. if I did, especially a mixed ferm saison on oak, I would add the oak weeks-to-months before I add the dryhops. 7-10 days before bottling is a known good schedule for dryhopping.
5. I'm a big fan of using oat, rye or spelt (non barley grains) in my saisons, usually about 30-40% of the grain bill. on top of a small% of wheat.
3711 is not the devil. some people just don't like it
HF has never bottled using only the saison/Brett combo. Shaun told me about a year and a half ago that the saisons were bottled with a neutral ale yeast.
I see mixed opinions on yeast here boys! The main reason for 3711 was the temperature of fermentation. It's getting pretty cold here in OH and will be fermenting in a basement that's around 60 degrees without the option of controlled temp. I heard other saison strains have the tendency to not finish the beer, but would the dregs (Brett strains) essentially finish the beer completely? If so that might actually be the better choice for what I'm shooting for.
If 60*F ambient is your only option, there are some saison yeasts that will work better, especially paired with Brett. I've come to let my saisons work with the seasons in my basement/garage, and I've had great success with low temperature saisons mixing The Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse and plenty of Brett (more on that at the end of the post).
I wouldn't use any saison strain at 60 degree ambient.
So long as it's with Brett, I think you can have good results, especially as the actual temperature of the ferment will probably be closer to 63-65*F. The caveat, discussed more below, is that when doing a healthy Brett pitch along with the saison yeast, you're going to get a much more fruity/ester-heavy saison, which isn't ideal if you prefer saisons that are on the phenolic side. I don't like the phenols in beers like Hennepin and vastly prefer the fruitiness of Fantôme, so this works for me.
Do you guys prefer to pitch dregs + sacch in primary or ferment with sacch, transfer and pitch dregs?
I pitch Sacch. plus Brett in the primary and usually also use spent oak cubes and/or scratched buckets that have Brett and LAB. I generally just do 4 weeks with this and then bottle/keg.
Thanks autocorrect, I sound like
danyP.
When I first saw the post, I thought you were intentionally channeling danyP, and doing a good job of it
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General Saison Thoughts:
A lot of this depends on what you're going for, as it's a wide-ranging "style" and people certainly have different goals. If you're shooting for something that's more funky, spicy, and phenolic, I'd recommend just going with Sacch. in the primary, letting it get down quite low, and then add dregs/Brett in secondary or at bottling. Nearly any saison strain should work for that, though as others have, I would recommend the Blaugies strain (3726).
If you prefer saisons that are fruitier with some tartness, I'd go with something along the lines of The Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse or ECY08 (Saison Blend). I would then also pitch this alongside a healthy dose of Brett that tends to be fruity-heavy in primary before it starts working on the Sacch.-created compounds. Here, best bets in my opinion are Brett C and Brett Trois. I use both. You could then also go with some fruitier American hops at flameout or for dry-hopping. Think IPA hops, just only use a third or a half of what you'd use for a bigger IPA.
In terms of fermentation temperature, I've honestly had success anywhere from the low 60s to the upper 70s when going with a fruitier strain paired with Brett, with fermentations taking about 2 weeks at the upper end of the range, and more toward 4 weeks at the lower end. However, the flavor profiles aren't that noticeably different.
A few other things you may or may not want to consider:
- If you want the resulting beer to be more ester heavy, go with a little bit less oxygen (I use 30 seconds of pure O2 per 5 gallons, as opposed to the general recommendation of 45-60 seconds.)
- If you're looking for more acidity and/or funk, I recommend doing a cleaner saison with just Sacch. and Brett, and then always keep on hand some base blonde wild for blending (even half a gallon of that in 5 gallons of beer without lactic acid banter will make a noticeable difference).
- I always use double the recommended rate of yeast nutrient per the recommendation in Farmhouse Ales. I don't know if it really makes a difference, but it's not hurting anything and the stuff isn't expensive.
- If you're messing with water profiles, a lot of people recommend heavier sulfate additions in saisons. I really don't like this. The finishing gravity is low enough to make it dry, and 25-30 IBUs will give it a nice bitter edge. I favor keeping chloride and sulfate roughly the same, aiming for 75-100ppm.
- If you're dealing with pH, keeping the mash pH down in the range of 5.2-5.4 (room temperature) really helps smooth things out.
- For the malt profile, as others have stated, it's always nice to get at least 10-20% wheat, spelt, oats, rye, flaked corn, etc. in there for some additional mouthfeel. 5-10% of something like Vienna is nice as well if you want to have a bit more ready flavor. With Munich, you can go higher, maybe around 20%.
Best of luck!
