Saison le petite - Northern Brewer *recommendations*

Hi all

I plan on doing northern brewers le petite saison.

per kit instructions:

Does anybody have any experience with this recipe kit or even the yeast. My last brew temp spiked to 74 degrees on day two of fermentation. I then placed it in a swamp cooler. It seems like this recipe may do alright with out a swamp cooler. I also plan on doing a "late" or even "at flame out" extract addition. I want the color to be as light as I can get it. I will run the numbers through beersmith to adjust the hop additions. I also plan on making a 1 liter starter for the yeast.

I'm super excited. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

I did this kit a while back and I would say if your in the 70's, I wouldn't bother with the swamp cooler. I think I let mine get up to right about 80 degrees and it turned out great. As for the late addition it should help with the color, I didn't do the late addition and it was still fairly light 5srm? The higher fermentation temperatures will really bring out the esters and flavors in a saison. The cooler it will ferment, those flavors and esters won't be quite where they should be (unless you want it that way).

I do want the esters and flavors. I think I might be a little wary of tempature issues from my last experience with nottingham yeast and my irish red ale. I just get a little nervous going over the recommended temp. I am kinda curious about using this yeast strain to ferment a wit beer. I would like to find a yeast that is easy for my enviroment and maybe this is the one.

Made this as my third batch, by far the best of them. Also my first with liquid yeast... I did a 1L starter for the 3711. Ambient temps in the high 60's and it turned out clean but still clearly belgian. Bucket temp hit around 72-74F per the temp strip. There's a huge thread on 3711 where you'll see it has a wide range where it performs well, just giving different favors but none are "off". I already want to make another batch of this.

Also I added the 3lbs LME late (15mins left in boil), helped keep a light color.

I did this one a little over a month ago, though i added a pound of honey post boil and an extra ounce of hops (forget which kind, but i have it written down somewhere.)
Fermented around 75F. FG went down to 1.001. The yeast is a monster.
The beer turned out great, and thanks to all my family members, it's almost gone. Hope you have good results too.

Do a search on 3711 in the Yeast pages.....its a fantastic yeast--my favorite Belgian/French yeast and in my all time Top 3.....if you are going for phenols you are going to love it! Oh...if you want lots of phenols, make sure it ferments hot...70-75+ (some people take it into the 80-90 range). I just did a Saison with it and fermented really cool. Not a lot of phenolic character when kept cool.

I brewed it yesterday. I am super excited to see how this turns out. I used Irish moss for the first time. I noticed quite a bit of sediment at the bottom of my carboy after transferring it. This is only my second batch so I'm not accustomed to adding two oz. of hops this late in the boil. I assume that's what has settled. You can even see it in the bottom of my hydrometer reading. I pitched at 64° and it was at 67° this morning bubbling away. I'm just going to let it do it's thing.

I did six batches of this last summer, adding rose hips five minutes before end of boil, rose petals one minute prior, and hibiscus five days before bottling. I did 6 batches because we were offering it to the audiences at a play before curtain and at intermission.

I fermented in front of my bedroom window AC unit, which was set between 70 and 75. The fermometers were frequently registering between 75 and 80, and it still turned out quite good. This is the best beer I think I've ever made.