Do you prefer to ferment saisons at ambient temps?

[Here Hare Here]

Ive become a bit obsessed with saisons and farmhouse ales and have been making them only for the past year and a half, just using ambient temps and mainly using 3711 pitching 18ish and letting rise to whatever.

In Sydneys winter they still get to 22-24 and are pretty clean with the summer ones easily getting to 30+, they're fruitier and slightly tart.

Ive heard again and again that if you can keep the temp around 18-20ish for pitching and the first day or 2 of fermentation then that will restrict any nasty fusels then you can let it rise to where it wants to go and its all just adding character.

Having said that Ive just done my first no chill saison which only got down to 26C so I pitched the 3711 at that temp, it smells fruity as anything after a week in the bucket, so we'll see what happens.

 

[ekul]

I thought the whole point of saisons was so you could ferment at ambient? I've only done a couple but its a great way to fill the kegs after they've been decimated. I'm definitely a convert. I did my first one because I hadn't brewed in ages and my ferment fridge only fits one fermenter, The first one wasn't great but the second one was a cracking beer. Will be doing many more.

 

[jyo]

It depends. I keep saying this: The Wyeast 3711 French Saison specifies a temp range of between 18' and 25'. If using this I make sure it's in the fridge and doesn't go too high. If it's one of the Belgian strains then I tend to let them sit at ambient and do their thing.

 

[Beer Ninja]

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.

I'm no expert and there are many opinions regarding temperature on here.
I brewed my first Saison a couple of weeks ago and came across this whilst looking for advice.

Modern saisons brewed in the USA tend to copy the yeast used by the Dupont Brewery, which ferments better at warmer temperatures—29 to 35 °C (84 to 95 °F)—than the standard 18 to 24 °C (64 to 75 °F) fermenting temperature used by other Belgian saison brewers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saison

 

[wereprawn]

beer

 

[schoey]

Just kegged and tasted my first saison. I'm a complete moron. Why haven't I been brewing this beer for years. Wyeast 3724 @ 19C for 1 day then ambient (brew shed's between 24C and 29C) onwards.

 

[mje1980]

3724 is my fave, num num!. They're all good though

 

[Here Hare Here]

Ive become a bit obsessed with saisons and farmhouse ales and have been making them only for the past year and a half, just using ambient temps and mainly using 3711 pitching 18ish and letting rise to whatever.

In Sydneys winter they still get to 22-24 and are pretty clean with the summer ones easily getting to 30+, they're fruitier and slightly tart.

Ive heard again and again that if you can keep the temp around 18-20ish for pitching and the first day or 2 of fermentation then that will restrict any nasty fusels then you can let it rise to where it wants to go and its all just adding character.

Having said that Ive just done my first no chill saison which only got down to 26C so I pitched the 3711 at that temp, it smells fruity as anything after a week in the bucket, so we'll see what happens.

-- Seems I might have pitched my slurry of 3711 & Brett mix rather than the clean 3711.
It reached 30C and now smells of galaxy hops but tastes like root beer or the antiseptic cream - Germolene.
10 days of dry hopping, grapefruit zest & juice has restored some balance but it is odd.