Bland Saison

Hey Folks,

Just sampled my first Saison attempt after a couple weeks in the bottle. I used WLP565 yeast and pitched it at around 31C. Had a very short lag time and no fermentation problems...went right down to 1.006 after 2 weeks in secondary. The flavor is lacking character however, I'm not getting any spicy/peppery notes...just tastes rather generic. I don't have temperature control although the brew never dropped below 22C during the whole course of fermentation. I'm thinking the temperature must have something to do with it, though my logic was that pitching it in a warm environment would really kick off the ester production right away.

How about more detail?
What was your recipe- malt and hops/hop schedule?

Here's what I came up with, nothing fancy since I had hoped the yeast would lend a lot of character:

- 2Kg Liquid Malt Extract
- 500g Pilsner Malt
- 250g Vienna Malt
- 250g Munich malt
- 30g Hallertau Hops @ 60min
- 30g Hallertau @ 10 min
- 112g grated ginger root @ 10min
- 50g dried Hibiscus flowers @ 10min
- 6g whole star anise @ 10 min
- 2 cups table sugar @ flameout
- White Labs WLP565 Saison Yeast (pitched at 31C)

Boy, I'm surprised you don't have much interesting character. You might have needed a longer boil or dry hopping with the spices in the fermentor for greater extraction of flavor. Another issue could be that much of the spicy quality of saisons is from the yeast. Perhaps the inhibited ester formation somehow. There are threads discussing this.