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....'!)
