Yeast Blending for Saisons

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WhamFish

WhamFish

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I just wanted to see if others have experimented with blending yeast strains to get high attenuation in Saisons. A number of yeast companies are offering "Saison Blends" but I'm able to culture up by own yeast from slants to make my own blends. Anyone have any experience in this and have a suggestion for percentages or good mixtures?

I'm currently working with:
WLP565
WLP566
Wyeast 3726

I'm planning on brewing with a 50/50 WLP566 and 3726 mixture at first to see what kind of attenuation I can get with that. I understand the french strain gets the best attenuation but maybe doesnt give as good of a phenol/farmhouse profile? Maybe I'll try a 40/40/20 mix of WLP566, 3726, 3711 after that.

Or maybe Brett trois might be a good addition in the mixture?

Anyway, I know there is no wrong answer but if anyone else has done this before I'd appreciate your input. I'd like to finish a 1.064 wort at like 1.002.
 
If you want 1.002, I'd use brett...... but it's not clear what flavor profile you want. If you want nice phenols, but no brett flavors/odors, I'd use one or more of the above yeasts in combination with 3711, which is a great attenuator. I'd also ferment relatively hot.
 
I have mixed WLP 530 and Belle Saison dry yeast with excellent results, awesome attenuation and both strains contribute to a unique phenolic potpourri. Just start cool and don't let it get too hot... I cap it at 78-80 degrees...
 
You might want to consider bringing that OG down into the 1.050-1.055 range. Otherwise you're going to be in the 8% abv range. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, a really high alcohol beer can cut into the refreshing nature that makes a saison a saison. When I get up into the 8 or 9% range, my saisons end up tasting more like tripels. Just throwing that out there for ya.
 
Anytime 3711 has played a role in my saisons, they have always gone down to at least 1.004, but are usually 1.001-3. I usually mash low and have a decent amount of simple sugars as well to go along with fermenting hot.
 
hirschb said:
If you want 1.002, I'd use brett...... but it's not clear what flavor profile you want. If you want nice phenols, but no brett flavors/odors, I'd use one or more of the above yeasts in combination with 3711, which is a great attenuator. I'd also ferment relatively hot.
Click to expand...

Ideally I'd like to clone Dupont, which is where the WLP566 comes from. My last try I got down to 1.004 which is basically where I need to be using only 566. I used only 1 lb of sugar and everything else was pilsner malt. It was for sure dry but too malty IMO. Next time I'll try additional sugar maybe 2 lbs to lower the % of fermentables coming from malt.

Its strange to me though because in the Farmhouse book they say Dupont is basically all pilsner malt. How are they getting rid of the malty flavor? I don't think my real problem is attenuation in this case. The main reason I'm attempting a mixed ferment is because it took me 2 months to get down to 1.004 last time which kind of sucks. All of the flavor was there in 1 week so I figure I can let 566 do the phenol development and something else can pick it up from there and take it down to FG, hopefully in 10 days rather than 40-60 days without losing the phenol profile I like.
 
If you want less malt flavor, I'd cut back on the OG (as suggested by ICWeiner). Dupont also ferments their beer at relatively high temps and ages it in the bottle for a while, so if you want something similar flavorwise, I'd try both. I've read elsewhere that Dupont isolates from Wyeast and White Labs noticeably mutate/evolve over time, and that they often work better after the first generation. If you have some dregs to build up, or a yeast cake to use, that might produce better results.
 
I have had excellent results building starters from a bottle of Dupont.

1.056 to 1.001. Ferment cool (70-ish) at first, ramping to 80+ over a week.
 
My wlp566 is from bottle dregs, I've just slanted it. Maybe I need to build up a bigger pitch, maybe that's why it took so many weeks.
 
i'll just list my good and bad experiences here for what it's worth to anyone. i did one saison with the wyeast dupont strain (3724?) and the white labs brett brux together. i started at 24 deg c and ramped to 32. went 1.066 to 1.001 in a few days. tasted like kerosene! bottled headbut. chucked it.
round two, re-made basically the same wort, pitched the dupont strain, then split it between two fermenters, left one with just saison yeast, and added white labs bretts brux, lambicus, trois (together) to the other. started these beers much cooler, i think 18-20c (damn it, it's not in my notes!) ramping up to 24-25. this time the saison yeast alone did its stalling out thing and wouldn't restart even at 30 deg, it 'finished' at 1.030. donated that one to the local sewer system. the other one finished 1.007 (from 1.061), separated it out to small jugs for 3 different dry hops (saaz, chinook, simcoe+amarillo), they were all reeeeallly tasty. i even found a few bottles 8 months later and they were excellent. these were bottled from the keg after 2 weeks in the fermenter + a few days dry hop. there was no 'extra' fermentation in the bottle, perfect carbonation.
 
i'll just list my good and bad experiences here for what it's worth to anyone. i did one saison with the wyeast dupont strain (3724?) and the white labs brett brux together. i started at 24 deg c and ramped to 32. went 1.066 to 1.001 in a few days. tasted like kerosene! bottled headbut. chucked it.
round two, re-made basically the same wort, pitched the dupont strain, then split it between two fermenters, left one with just saison yeast, and added white labs bretts brux, lambicus, trois (together) to the other. started these beers much cooler, i think 18-20c (damn it, it's not in my notes!) ramping up to 24-25. this time the saison yeast alone did its stalling out thing and wouldn't restart even at 30 deg, it 'finished' at 1.030. donated that one to the local sewer system. the other one finished 1.007 (from 1.061), separated it out to small jugs for 3 different dry hops (saaz, chinook, simcoe+amarillo), they were all reeeeallly tasty. i even found a few bottles 8 months later and they were excellent. these were bottled from the keg after 2 weeks in the fermenter + a few days dry hop. there was no 'extra' fermentation in the bottle, perfect carbonation.
 
My experience:

* WLP565/WY3724 : This is the classic DuPont strain, and is known to stall out in the first few generations in the 1.020 to 1.030 range, and then potentially pick back up as long as 2 weeks later.
* WLP566 : Rumored to be another DuPont strain, and tends to be a bit fruitier than 565, but still gives a nice classic Saison flavor.
* WY3711 : French saison drops the gravity out and ferments most everything down to 1.004 or less, but doesn't give quite the peppery penolic notes that DuPont strains give, especially the first one listed.
* Belle Saison : Relatively recent dry strain; haven't personally experimented, but Mike Tonsmeire gave some good notes on this strain (and others I've listed) here: http://www.themadfermentationist.co...eMadFermentationist+(The+Mad+Fermentationist)

If you want to blend, try to pick strains that will complement one another. As others have said, if you want to get the gravity really low, maybe brett in secondary is the way to go. I love brett brux/trois saisons. I don't know if there's great purpose to mixing 565/566 as their profiles are very similar, but you will get the added advantage of 566 helping you out when/if 565 stalls out. In that case, you may want to vary when you pitch them, so pitch a big starter of 565 and then add 566 when 565 is at high kreusen so that the majority of your flavor profile comes from one.

To Dinnerstick's point, while some commercial breweries are able to get terrific results pitching this strain quite warm (75 F) and quickly raise the temp up into the 80s and 90s, I have had very poor results at the homebrew level with this method. At the advice at one of my good friends who frequently places and wins categories 16 and 18 in BJCP competitions, I have started fermenting saisons by pitching at 66 F, and letting the tempe rise 2 degrees F per day until day 3, and then letting it free rise. Most recently, I did this with WLP566 and the results were very good when compared to other commercial and homebrewed examples. It only finished at 1.007, so not extremely dry, but it ended up very tasty. WLP585 is out now, so I'm planning on doing a saison with that strain within the next few weeks to compare.

Best of luck.
 
mkeckjr said:
My experience:

* WLP565/WY3724 : This is the classic DuPont strain, and is known to stall out in the first few generations in the 1.020 to 1.030 range, and then potentially pick back up as long as 2 weeks later.
* WLP566 : Rumored to be another DuPont strain, and tends to be a bit fruitier than 565, but still gives a nice classic Saison flavor.
* WY3711 : French saison drops the gravity out and ferments most everything down to 1.004 or less, but doesn't give quite the peppery penolic notes that DuPont strains give, especially the first one listed.
* Belle Saison : Relatively recent dry strain; haven't personally experimented, but Mike Tonsmeire gave some good notes on this strain (and others I've listed) here: http://www.themadfermentationist.co...eMadFermentationist+(The+Mad+Fermentationist)

If you want to blend, try to pick strains that will complement one another. As others have said, if you want to get the gravity really low, maybe brett in secondary is the way to go. I love brett brux/trois saisons. I don't know if there's great purpose to mixing 565/566 as their profiles are very similar, but you will get the added advantage of 566 helping you out when/if 565 stalls out. In that case, you may want to vary when you pitch them, so pitch a big starter of 565 and then add 566 when 565 is at high kreusen so that the majority of your flavor profile comes from one.

To Dinnerstick's point, while some commercial breweries are able to get terrific results pitching this strain quite warm (75 F) and quickly raise the temp up into the 80s and 90s, I have had very poor results at the homebrew level with this method. At the advice at one of my good friends who frequently places and wins categories 16 and 18 in BJCP competitions, I have started fermenting saisons by pitching at 66 F, and letting the tempe rise 2 degrees F per day until day 3, and then letting it free rise. Most recently, I did this with WLP566 and the results were very good when compared to other commercial and homebrewed examples. It only finished at 1.007, so not extremely dry, but it ended up very tasty. WLP585 is out now, so I'm planning on doing a saison with that strain within the next few weeks to compare.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...


How does Brett Trois interact with the phenols produced by the Sac yeast? Reportedly Brett interacts with these phenols and produces the "Brett Funk", but the Trois strain has some different characteristics so I'm wondering if you actually get a huge funky brett aroma or if it produces more fruity esters.
 

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