Do you prefer to ferment saisons at ambient temps?

[mr_wibble]

I don't understand something, well there's a lot of things I don't understand, but in particular about historical Vs modern Saison.

As far as I've read, Saison was brewed in (what is now) southern Belgium & northern France during winter for the summer harvest workers.
Brewing a good harvest beer was important, because if you had good beer you were popular with the workers, and if you had bad beer, I reckon your harvest would be lower in priority (or maybe even DIY).

Now the average daily summer temperature for Belgium is probably somewhere around 25°C (23°C average for Antwerp in July). In winter it's ~ 6°C.

Q: How did we get to fermenting saisons at 30°C (or more) - is it simply because it's better that way?
Q: Are there any commercial examples of somewhat historically accurate Saison ?

Maybe I better read that beer style book on it.

 

[manticle]

Lecterfan - the rest of AU has summer this time of year and even the nights are warm. You live in the arctic so you need to take more care.

 

[philmud]

They're good questions Mr Wibble. I'd be interested if anyone has an answer.

 

[TimT]

Is it perchance a beer that is fermented in the kitchen? Would be a warm place, what with all the breadmaking, etc.

In my other life as a cheesemaker I've wondered about that stage early in the development of Swiss cheese where you are told to mature the cheese at room temperature, 25 degrees, for two weeks or 'until it swells' - ie, when you get action from the Proprioni bacteria, which gives the cheese its distinctive holes. Now if you're a traditional sort of Swiss person how do you ensure that sort of stable temperature? Advice in my cheese books is to put the cheese... 'in the kitchen'.

 

[philmud]

This http://www.picobrewery.com/askarchive/saison.htm suggests that saisons were brewed in March, before it became "too hot". Presumably, even if this was done in the kitchen, temps would still be well south of 30C - perhaps modern saisons ARE brewed warmer. Be interesting to know what temperature Brasserie DuPont brew their saison at, seeing as it's often held up as a bit of a yardstick.

 

[djar007]

Dupont yeast straind are a high temp strain as far as I have read . Cant find original article but wikipedia supports this.

 

[Lecterfan]

One of my fave brewing books, all is contained within:

http://www.brewerspublications.com/books/farmhouse-ales-culture-and-craftsmanship-in-the-belgian-tradition/

 

[mje1980]

35c for 4 days for DuPont according to a few sources. However that is mainly because they don't have storage and need to get primary done quickly from my dodgy memory. Think I read it in that saison and farmhouse ales book.

Yeah I guess the heat belt is a form of temp control, but it's a very loose form of temp control haha.

Either way, when fermented warm I've never noticed the usual flaws you get from high temp fermentation with pretty much all other strains. They taste great.

 

[mje1980]

That book you linked to

 

[mje1980]

Oh and in that farmhouse ales book there seems to be a bit of difference between old saison and modern saison. Sorry bit vague, il have a look over the book and report back.

Ok, well I'm not really going to type out the whole book, but the older saisons, very briefly were either bitter, or sour, quite flat, and possibly fermented with other organisms, though not all., some were almost like gueze. Attenuation high.

Also has a chapter on the Belgian saison yeast ( 3724 ).

Great book

 

[jyo]

You only need a heat belt if you're wearing hot pants.

Or brewing in The Icy Tundra

I keep reading that many are pushing the French 3711 up to and passed 30' without negatives. I haven't pushed it that high due to the wyeast recommendation of 25' as the top end. My favourite saison yeast I reckon. :icon_drool2:

 

[mje1980]

Was mine too but now it's 3724. Sipping on one now that spent lots of time at 30-35! Bloody nice. The keg next to it is a 3711 saison, that also spent time at 30-35. Also bloody nice!

 

[Dave70]

I think Tony used to ferment his Saisons around 30 deg. The Bullshead summer one at least.

Not sure if I'd follow lead however, his beers always looked terrible.


http://aussiehomebrewer.com/recipe/1528-bullshead-motueka-saison/

 

[timmi9191]

I think I read somewhere the workers brewed in the farmhouse lofts. This gave rise to the name farmhouse and that they were brewed quickly at high temp to satisfy their ongoing thirst..

Take no responsibility for the accuracy of this though..

 

[Batz]

Well mines away, using W3726 private collection. It's sitting at 28C atm and looking dangerously like it may want to crawl out of the FV. I hope not, no good would come of that.

Batz

 

[TimT]

Interestingly just last night, when we got back from a jaunt to Sydney, I checked up on my most recent saison - a herbal concoction of yarrow flower and leaf, raspberry and strawberry leaf, and lemon peel. It had seemingly stopped fermenting - the temps were a little too ambient, it seemed. This morning I measured the gravity - down to 1.002. Yep, that really is the end of ferment, I thought, and made preparations for bottling. (When we left for Sydney, it was certainly fermenting at a very slow pace, so I was not surprised by this).

In the meantime, the saison had seemingly *begun* fermenting again, with definite bubbling through the airlock.

Possibly the yeast was having a break in yesterday's insane temps. Or maybe the influx of oxygen when I opened up the fermenter to take a sample spurred something.... ?!??? My previous saison may have reacted in a similar manner - I added apricot during secondary fermentation; the act of adding an ingredient seemed to make the yeast very happy indeed.

Regardless, I'll be giving the saison a few more days before bottling - I'm definitely grateful to not be bottling today, with temps hitting around 36 degrees celsius.

(The herbal saison tastes quite nice actually - pleasant winey-soft bitter-sourness, a combination, I guess, of the light herbal additions and the esters produced by the yeast. When I tasted it I went, 'mmm, quite estery' and it sounded like I said, 'Mmmm, like an estuary....'!)

 

[philmud]

That sounds like an interesting drop! I don't use airlocks, so this is purely speculative, but could the renewed activity be dissolved Co2 leaving your beer as it warms, rather than bona fide fermentation? Your hydrometer will tell you for sure, but that seems possible to me. The apricot would have been different because you were adding more sugar to ferment.

My summer saaz saison seems to have finished at 1.001, so thanks Belle, it should be bone dry. I ended up increasing the temp to 25 after three days and it's sitting there at the moment. I also took the unusual step of dry hopping with 5g Nelson Sauvin and 15g Summer. Will let it sit for another week, then cold crash and bottle.

 

[TimT]

That's possible - I may have stirred up the dregs at the bottom and released CO2 that way. Of course a lot of warming happened yesterday so a lot of the CO2 could have escaped then. Anyway I think it should be safe to leave it to settle for another day or two. Really not eager to do bottling today.

My previous saison dropped down to 1.004; I'm happy with how this yeast is working out. Even allowing for a correction to the gravity due to temperature the gravity readings are still quite satisfying.

 

[Batz]

My saison turned out fantastic, I have another down now and a little more adventurous this time.

Very quickly falling in love with this style.

 

[Rambo]

My saison turned out fantastic, I have another down now and a little more adventurous this time.

Very quickly falling in love with this style.

Sorry, off topic but I have to ask.... What is that a collection of in the background?