First Saison.

I brewed my first saison last weekend, and it's currently fermenting in the low 80s. I brewed 10 gallons. 5 gallons will remain as is. However, I am doing some additions to the second five gallons.

I purchased some flavored belgian candi syrups from Cascade Beer Candi Co. in Washington (very good customer service and prices, I might add). I bought a pound each of their ginger candi syrup and their Chipotle poblano chili syrup. Their recommendations is for a pound per 5 gallon batch. Here was my intentions:

4 gallons would get 3/4 lb of the ginger syrup.
1 gallon would get 1/4 pound or less of the chipotle syrup.

Does anyone have experience with adding candi syrup to secondary? If so, should I wait for fermentation to stop or should I transfer before I reach my FG?

Whenever I add candi sugar, I add it to the primary about 3 days after fermentation has started. The only problem I can think of when transferring to the secondary is there might not be enough yeast to fully eat all the sugar, but with that small amount of sugar it might not be a problem. I would definitely let the beer finish fermenting before transfer though.

Edit: I use hard candi sugar that I make, not syrup. Not sure if this makes a difference.

bcgpete said:

Whenever I add candi sugar, I add it to the primary about 3 days after fermentation has started. The only problem I can think of when transferring to the secondary is there might not be enough yeast to fully eat all the sugar, but with that small amount of sugar it might not be a problem. I would definitely let the beer finish fermenting before transfer though.

Edit: I use hard candi sugar that I make, not syrup. Not sure if this makes a difference.

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Thanks. I was wondering the same thing about sugar v. syrup. I imagine it would act in the same way.

Thanks for the input.

Rack it whenever you like. So long as you don't drop the temperature and the yeast drops out of suspension before you rack, you will carry over any active yeast with the liquid, and not stall the fermentation.

Racking sooner will leave more trub in the secondary. I'd try to avoid this because of fermenting at higher temperatures which accelerates yeast decay. If you leave it for any length of time, you really don't want too much old yeast in there.

You can add the sugar to the secondary after fermentation has stopped. It is simple sugar, and not too much. You will have plenty of yeast