Saison at low temp?

[Andreas]

I started a Saison several weeks back (meant to brew it in late summer), and the temp in my cellar dropped drastically, to 62 F. Now, it did most of it's fermentation and has dropped to around 1.02.
Has anyone here fermented a Saison at temps that are so far below specs? I'm considering kegging it to get it off the trub and letting it finish out its fermentation in the keg. I would simply rack it into a secondary but all my carboys are otherwise occupied. (It's hard cider season here in VT.)

 

[jmo88]

Which yeast are you using? Getting a saison to finish below 1.008 with the Dupont strain is a real challenge and you need to be in the 80's to get it down far enough. The Dupont strain is known for chugging along and stopping abruptly around 1.020-1.030. If you used Wyeast 3711 you could get away with fermenting it dry in the upper 60's, easily.

 

[maida7]

I think you will have problems with attenuation. If it's still at 1.020 after several weeks then It's probably stuck and or done. Most Belgian yeast will quit working if it gets cold.

It may be sweeter then the style and the flavor should be fairly clean. Less fruity, more phenolic.

 

[Andreas]

It may be sweeter then the style and the flavor should be fairly clean. Less fruity, more phenolic.

I did taste it when I took the gravity reading -- it was slightly more sweet but the flavor is certainly "Saison" as I expect it. This one is actually a low gravity beer very similar to Dupont's "Biere de table." I usually brew it to grow the yeast culture for a bigger saison, but obviously I got it started too late in the season for that.

 

[Homercidal]

Saison yeast is a bugger. If you are in a hurry, maybe try adding a bit of champagne yeast to finish it off? Or get the temp back up and hope for the best.

 

[Andreas]

Saison yeast is a bugger. If you are in a hurry, maybe try adding a bit of champagne yeast to finish it off? Or get the temp back up and hope for the best.

Right now, I'm considering bottling it in champagne bottles -- I think that they can handle the extra carbonation from 1.02 to 1.01 in case it ever happens!

 

[Andreas]

I think you will have problems with attenuation. If it's still at 1.020 after several weeks then It's probably stuck and or done. Most Belgian yeast will quit working if it gets cold.

It may be sweeter then the style and the flavor should be fairly clean. Less fruity, more phenolic.

FYI I finally bottled last week at 1.010. The beer is exactly as I wished for a Biere de Table: light but full flavored, fruity, herbal and farmy aromas (included a very citrus-like aroma!), lovely finish.
I really wanted to follow up on this, because the fermentation temp dropped into the mid- to low fifties during the last two months. The (positive) results that I got really go against the grain of popular wisdom regarding the temps for Saison yeast. It was done by mid-November (6 weeks primary) but I did not have any time to bottle, so it really went for WAY longer in the primary than is "safe" according to the wisdom regarding autolysis. This beer is as good as, if not better than, a biere de table that I made in very hot summer weather.
It was all-grain, with only Belgian pils malt with Wyeast's Belgian Saison yeast, and I can't recall which hops I used -- I think that it was Styrian Goldings. Delicious!
-Andy, now on to some lagers for the winter...