Interesting directions

So I have been wanting to do a saison since I started making beer. I have three successes under my belt so far and all of them involved primary for 2-3 weeks followed by bottling.

A friend of mine gave me on of his recipes for a saison, and I know that the alcohol content prolly puts this one out side of the true style, but what I thought was interesting was the fermentation schedule. 1 week primary, then rack to secondary for 2 weeks, then bottle.

8 lb light Pilsen
8 oz flakes corn
5 oz Belgian aromatic
4 oz biscuit

1.5 tetting 60min
.25 teething 30 min
1 saaz flameout

Wl p550 yeast

Any thought? I will probably just follow the directions as given, but was curious to the advantage of this ferment schedule.

 

Oh and those hops might not be correct

 

A lot of the kits have directions like this. There is plenty of info on the forum about primary length and whether to secondary or not. I would not follow that schedule. Your friend may use it and have good results, but I like a longer primary. How do you really know if fermentation is finished. Only by using a hydrometer can you tell. iI would continue to do what you have been doing. 2-3 weeks(or longer) primary and then bottle.

 

I think he means "Tetnang (German)",but tething? And Saaz is Czech or US,Czech being the original strain. Good stuff,certainly. It mixes well with Perle,another German hop.

 

It is my own personal view and I'm sure I'll get flamed but... 1 primary 2 secondary... 2 primary - 1 secondary... there's no real difference.

The only difference between a "primary" and a "secondary" is the secondary will have less yeast as most of it has already fallen out of solution in the primary.

The debate on whether secondary is even neccessary can rage on forever but again, all it is doing is getting the beer off of the yeast cake. If a beer sits on a yeast cake too long, it has a good chance of going "soapy" and picking up some off flavors... but that usually takes a fairly long time... 6-8 weeks in my experience.

If the yeast is healthy, pitched at the proper rate and temperatures are appropriate, the beer should be very close to being fully feremnted out in a week and the dead yeast will have fallen out to a large extent already so... moving it from primary to secondary at either 1 week vs 2 weeks only means you are going to drop out more/less of the spent yeast but either way, a majority of it has already dropped out.

I don't see it as a big deal and my suggestion is to simply rack it at some point after a week as it is convenient.

 

That's the old myth we argue about all the time. Old,outdated,& basically wrong. The yeast are not dying just because they're falling out of suspension. They're just going dormant. Otherwise,yeast washing,especially after fermenting a big beer,would be virtually impossible!
I've gone with slightly longer primaries,with non of the soapy off flavors associated with what was thought to be dead yeast.

 

Sorry... dead yeast AND dormant yeast. My bad. Wasn't being that technical.

either way, I don't see 1 week primary 2 weeks secondary being a bit of difference from 2 weeks primary 1 week second.

 

Or a 3 week primary.

 

I think I would only secondary if wanting to add something to the beer... Dry hopping or adding fruit or something...

or maybe switch to 2nday to get beer off of fruit...

SIDENOTE: when making wine most people ferment in a bucket... Then move to a secondary to allow stuff to drop to the bottom and clear & rack again and again... Basically to end up with clear wine...

 

thanks guys that is what i thought also.

sorry about the hops stuff. auto correct on smart phones strikes again.
i will just stick to my normal schedule of 2-3 in primary, then bottle

 

oh yah, the hops for the recipe are styrian and the late saaz addition if you all were interested in trying this recipe.

 

so this one didn't really go as planned. the wlp550 didn't take so I had to repitch with something. the local store didn't have the wlp550 so I had to pitch the only belgian they had, wy trappest. not sure how they differ as I have not used either before this, but I did have activity this morning.

 

What do you mean "didn't take"??

 

"didn't take" = 1. pitched yeast, 2. watched nothing happen for three days, 3. go to backup plan of pitching other yeast because I didn't want a total loss on the project. 4. next morning after repitching there is action like every other beer I have made.

not sure if I just got a bad vile of yeast or what. never happened to me before.