If it were me... I'd brew it without any fruit or spices or any extra stuff like that. See how the saison tastes on it's own. Then, if you want to rebrew it with fruit, you'll have a better idea what would work with your beer.
Agreed. However, I totally recommend that you experiment with all of your ideas. 3711 was my gateway into pushing saisons as far as I wanted. Definitely play around with the pure simplicity of the yeast itself without spices, fruit, brett, lacto, pedio, etc. Make 10 gallons batches, you'll thank yourself later. Eventually try fermenting 3711 around 80F too if you can. I'm drinking a 79 IBU pils/wheat/cara60 "Saison d'Lupulin" at the moment that I made in April, fermented with 3711 at 86F. Yes, 86F. And it is incredible. Seriously.
I've been using 3711 for years at 72-74F with a pils/wheat bill with styrians and EKG at 30-ish IBUs and have turned out excellent saisons. I eventually started adding brett and lacto to the same beers, waited 6 months, added fruit, waited another 3 months, bottled, waited another 3 months, and ended up with crazy brett saisons that could rival Boulevard Brewing.
Use whole fruit. It's July and THIS WEEK is THE week to get out to your farmer's market or farm and pick/gather/hoard as many blueberries, raspberries, cherries or whatever you can get your hands on. Just GET them, then freeze them. You can use them at any point over the next 12 months. Whole fruit will give you a much more complex flavor profile than puree or juice. I know I'm starting a huge argument here but I'm just pointing out the truth. :rockin: If you are doing a fast saison without brett I think you could go with peach or apricot. A friend of mine did a blood orange saison years ago that was amazing.
3711 is one amazing Saison strain. It lends itself to all kinds of experimentation. What? What was that? Did someone say lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and coconut? No, that must have been my imagination.
