Grassy/Soil Flavor from 3711?

Brewing a saison with Wyeast 3711. Malts and hops are nothing out of the ordinary. Started ferment at 63F and gradually ramped it to 77F for a few days then brought it back to around 70. Racked to secondary after 8 days in primary. Attenuated well, tasted the sample and am overcome with grassy garden soil flavors. Is this normal? Will it fade? Did I #*&@ something up? No one else seems to have had the same problem. I am actually brewing the same beer today so i have a chance to fix it if i can put my finger on it. Arrggghhhh.

I'm on my 3711 learning curve right now too so I can't give you too much. However, from what I have read you want to start warmer...around 66-68 or else you start really losing the saison character. Then you only need to ramp into the low 70's to get all the saison character you want. As far as the grassy flavor my money is on that its either some yeast bite or hops still in suspension. Let it clear up and give it another try. Any reason to rack off the yeast so soon?

My fermentation of 3711 is almost identical to yours. I haven't gotten any kind of grassy, soily flavors.

How did you hop it?

Grassy sounds like hops to me. Never gotten that flavor from 3711. Did you dry hop at all? How old were your hops? I have heard but not experienced that pellet hops are more likely to create those sorts of flavors than whole hops, but I've never dry hopped with pellets, so cannot confirm. It does seem like hops never taste quite right in the uncarbed sample, and 8 days is NOT very old...maybe it'll taste better cold, carbed and slightly more mature.

Did you use a lot of saaz?

The grassiness seems to be of yeast origin, but as we all know it can be difficult to impossible to seperate flavors in unconditioned beer. I used northern brewer and EKG in responsible amounts for bittering and flavor, but I will say that I used pellet hops for the first time in two years on this beer. I added 2oz of Sterling pellets at 1 minute. This is actually a strawberry ginger saison so I wanted to develop a nice bouquet on the nose. No dry hopping. Just four lbs of strawberries and 2 oz ginger. Perhaps that flavor is from the sterling hops... but its definately a flavor thing- not aroma.

P.S. some ppl rack off the yeast early with this type of fermentation schedule because it causes more rapid yeast autolysis which can and will impart negative flavors into a beer. Like everyone says with this yeast, it is actually done in four days and just kinda playing clean up at that point. fermented to 1.005 in 4 days.