Saison tasting hot

[kirkb]

Hey everyone,

So I brewed my first AG Saison - and it is tasting hotter than expected. I should mention that it is sitting at about 7-8% (I brewed it to a higher OG than I planned at first) which clearly is fairly high for this style anyway - but it is tasting a bit hotter than I would have expected (which I believe is a flaw, as opposed to the alcohol level - though I may be wrong...)

A couple possibilities - I brought over quite a bit of trub when transferring to the fermenter - also I left the beer in primary for about 4 1/2 weeks (and no secondary - as I am convinced that secondary is basically useless unless clarity is a concern...)

I used wyeast 3711 - and fermented in a water bath that ramped up the temp to about 80 deg over a week - and then I let the beer come back to room temp (after about 2 weeks in the heated water bath). It sat at room temp for about 2 1/2 weeks.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Kirk

 

[eastoak]

the upper temp range for that yeast is 77 degrees and i like to ferment it around 68-70. i've never bought into fermenting a saison hot, tried it once and got the hot alcohol/fusel thing, never again. you will get differing opinions on what time will do to those flavors and here's mine; it won't get better.

 

[kirkb]

I've tasted beers with a fusel character many times before (unfortunately - though luckily not mine usually...) and high ferm temps seemed to almost always be the culprit - so I was concerned about this as well - but I was always told to ramp up the temps. Is this only with the Belgian Saison strain not the French Saison?

 

[scutiger]

From my experience, it's a temperature issue. I've done several saison's over the past couple years. The first one was an extract batch about 7% and I used the white labs saison II yeast, I started fermenting at room temp and then ramped it up to the 80s just like you described and it came out "hot" I figured it's a saison, so it needs to ferment warm, but now I know better, and just follow the suggested temps for each strain. The next 2 I did, I followed the same recipe, and fermented in the low 70's and these both came out much smoother. The 3711 has a temp range of 65-77 F, so I think it should still have been fermented low in that range and then naturally allowed to rise into the mid 70's. Unfortunately the "hot" alcohol taste is most likely from fusel alcohols and that flavor doesn't really mellow all that much with time.

 

[TheSmithsEra]

I fermented my Saison with WLP 568 at around 90+ degrees for the first couple days. When i bottled it, it had a hot alcohol after taste, but after a week in the bottle i had one and that after taste was gone. Going on three weeks now and i don't taste hot alcohol anymore. Although, it should only be about 5%

 

[WileECoyote]

Hello, 3724 yeast will ferment 80 to 85 with no hot alcohol taste, 95 deg is the high end for this yeast, I start mine off at 75 then every day raise temp 3 to 4 deg un-till its at 83, before I did this it would stick at about 1.030 un-till I would raise the temp above 80 deg, then it would take off fermenting again.

cheers

 

[emsroth]

Hello, 3724 yeast will ferment 80 to 85 with no hot alcohol taste, 95 deg is the high end for this yeast, I start mine off at 75 then every day raise temp 3 to 4 deg un-till its at 83, before I did this it would stick at about 1.030 un-till I would raise the temp above 80 deg, then it would take off fermenting again.

cheers

Did you taste the beer during fermentation? I am using the WLP565 which is the same as 3724. Started at 75 until fermentation activity. Then a 3 F raise every 24 hours. I'm set at 87 now after 5 days and it does have a hot, burning flavor. I hope that it will clean up soon.