Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison yeast - odd fermentation

Hi guys,


Pitched at 70F, rose to 85 over the course of the next day. Very violent aromatic fermentation. Next day it appeared primary fermentation (or at least the violent krausening stuff) had ended. Now my hydrometer reading is dropping very very slowly day by day. No airlock activity (I know, I know, this is not necessarily a sign of fermentation stopping). I do see the little blips on the surface of the wort, but not much suspended yeast. I have been holding between 85 and 93 degrees. Have others had similar experiences with 3724? And should I expect it to work slowly and take a decently long time to wrap up fermentation?

Yep. That sounds like 3724. Just leave her be and she'll crawl her way down to FG.

Thank you much. Such an interesting fermentation. I have never seen primary end so quickly.

I am now going through the same process with the 3724 yeast. So far I've had a week of fermentation. At the mercy of the summer weather the beer has hung around 70 - 75 sometimes up to 80. So far I've dropped 14 points (1.054 - 1.040). Did either of you move the beer to a secondary to get it off the first yeast cake? I don't want to disrupt the yeast when they are doing so well so far.

If you move it to a secondary when it's at 1.040, it will stall completely. Just be patient, and try to keep it at 80 or above.

I've got 3724 fermenting and it is DEFINITELY a pain in the posterior! Today is 2 weeks with my 1.066 wort and I've just now achieved 1.040. I do have Brett B in there as well. At any rate, temp is at just over 80 degrees and it shows occaisionsl bubbling in my blow-off as well as yeast movement through the glass. I'm figuring 4-5 weeks should drive it home...

It will be well worth the wait. I just took a reading of the Saison that I brewed last weekend. It went from 1.071 to 1.042 in one week. I think that is great for this strain.
I will not move it off of the yeast cake until I bottle/keg. The sample tasted very good, albeit a bit sweet for the style (not that I am a style snob). I added bitter orange peel at the end of the boil to make it even more interesting. I will take another gravity measure in three weeks to see where we are. This strain takes lots of patience. If it is really stuck, I have some 3711 that I can pitch to finish it up...

I used 3724 to make a saison this spring - after a week the gravity was at 1.040. Then the wait began .. it took about 10 weeks for the yeast to get the gravity down. I just left it on the cake the entire time. The wait was worth it though, the flavor profile is absolutely outstanding.

In my saison, I decided to use Citra hops to "further along" then perception of fruit in the beer. Im hoping for strong esters and phenolics all wound up in a Brett funk and Citra hop flavor. Here's the strange thing: At 1 week, I took a hydro sample and noticed a beautiful yeast character (im talking best flavor in a week old beer ive tasted). This weekend (2 weeks) I took another only to find that the citra hops REALLY shine through and the yeast character wasn't as pronounced. This confounds me. Im not worried about it as it tasted nice and Lord knows that when the Brett kicks in it will take on something all together different. Im not sure why the hop character came through so much in 2 weeks and it was all yeast week 1???