Brett Table Saison Review

Appearance: Billowing, dense white head with excellent retention. Golden hazy body with lots of little bubbles rising up the side of the glass.

Aroma: Immediate impression of mild bretty funk. Not super fruity, just bretty. Maybe aspiriny smell. Earthy hop character and malt character is minimal. Pleasant. I don't get any notes of cherry, despite the name of the yeast.

Taste: Brett is the star here. Light funk, aspirin like notes, maybe a little bit of acidity. Hop flavor is low. Not much in the way of malt, as whatever malt notes one can get from a 1.030OG beer are surely covered by the brett here.

Mouthfeel: A bit thin and watery, unsurprisingly. Quite dry, but not highly carbonated enough to give it a tingly feeling like champagne. Does leave a bretty aftertaste.

Overall: Light in brett funk, refreshing and at 3.3% very easy drinking. I may brew a beer like this again, though since it's the parti-gyle of a 12% wheatwine, I will have to use a different recipe since I don't plan to brew another huge beer for a while. 

Wheatwine & Brett Table Saison Brew Day

I've been wanting to brew a Wheat Wine Ale for while, ever since seeing the recipe in Modern Homebrew Recipes. Of course, I made some substitutions for the hops and grain that were available to me. And, since 24.5 pounds of grain is a lot, I decided to get a batch of Brett Saison with the partigyle batch.

Wheat Wine ferments

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Wheatwine
Style: Wheatwine
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.64 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.51 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal  
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.121 SG
Estimated Color: 12.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 48.4 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 73.9 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
5.50 gal              Boston, MA                               Water         1        -            
8.00 g                Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent   2        -            
5.00 g                Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins)        Water Agent   3        -            
2 lbs                 Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM)                     Adjunct       4        7.1 %        
10 lbs                Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)                Grain         5        35.7 %       
4 lbs                 Wheat Malt, Dark (9.0 SRM)               Grain         6        14.3 %       
3 lbs                 Munich (BestMälz) (7.6 SRM)              Grain         7        10.7 %       
3 lbs                 Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)            Grain         8        10.7 %       
1 lbs                 Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)    Grain         9        3.6 %        
1 lbs                 Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)                    Grain         10       3.6 %        
1 lbs                 Wheat - Red Malt (Briess) (2.3 SRM)      Grain         11       3.6 %        
1 lbs                 Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)                  Grain         12       3.6 %        
8.0 oz                Acid Malt (3.0 SRM)                      Grain         13       1.8 %        
1 lbs 8.0 oz          Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM)         Sugar         14       5.4 %        
1.00 oz               Equinox (HBC 366) [14.20 %] - Boil 10.0  Hop           15       10.1 IBUs    
1.00 oz               Simcoe [12.90 %] - Boil 10.0 min         Hop           16       9.1 IBUs     
1.00 oz               Equinox (HBC 366) [14.20 %] - Boil 1.0 m Hop           17       1.2 IBUs     
1.00 oz               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min          Hop           18       1.1 IBUs     
2.00 oz               Galaxy [14.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool  60.0 Hop           19       27.4 IBUs    
2.0 pkg               California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35. Yeast         20       -        

1 oz each of Centennial, Calypso, Simcoe and Azacca, dry, 7 days  


Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 1 Step, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 28 lbs
----------------------------
Name                    Description                                          Step Temperat Step Time    
Mash Step               Add 31.80 qt of water at 108.9 F                     104.0 F       10 min       
Mash Step               Add 0.00 qt of water and heat to 131.0 F over 10 min 131.0 F       15 min       
Mash Step               Heat to 146.0 F over 10 min                          146.0 F       40 min       
Mash Step               Heat to 158.0 F over 10 min                          158.0 F       15 min       
Mash Step               Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min                          168.0 F       15 min       

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 3.82gal) of 168.0 F water
Notes:

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Brewed 11/16/16.
Wheat Wine
Not completely sure I got the right temp on the rests. Even stirring the mash constantly there seemed to be variation around 5F-10F in the temperature of the mash.

Ended up with about 5.75 gallons of wort into the fermenter at 1.110 OG, lower than hoped both for gravity and volume. But given this is a very high gravity beer a low efficiency is expected. And, there was a lot of trub that got into the fermenter.

May use DME to brew some top-off beer to get up to the right volume.

Made a starter with 1 pack of dry yeast. Added that and a second pack of dry yeast when beer was 65F. After ~12 hours, good activity. After 36 hours, very rapid fermentation. Ambient temps in the 62F - 65F range. Tomorrow will move been to warmer place.

Color of the wort was beautiful deep amber. It tasted like malt candy. Very sweet and very malty.

Racked to secondary in mid-December.

Added dry hops on 2/25/17, will crash cool, keg and force carbonate in a week.

Hydrometer sample read the FG as 1.030, a bit over the predicted final gravity of 1.027 or so. Taste was a perhaps a bit too sweet. The recipe in Modern Homebrew Recipes had an FG of 1.018, significantly lower than my beer here. Maybe will taste a few samples of the carbed beer then if needed pitch a small starter of US-05 to dry it out a bit more, but would really prefer not to do that.

Brett Table Saison ferments

Brett Table Saison
Same mash as above but with no sugar, partigyled with ~6.5 gallons of 180F water.
Hop schedule was 1oz Tettnanger, 4%, at 60 min, 1oz Tettnanger, 4% at 10 min.

Got 5.1 gallons into fermenter at 1.030 OG. So, around 18% mash efficiency.

Shook to aerate, then pitched left over Tart Cherry Brett left over from a previous beer. No starter.

Wort was light amber color. The taste was fairly bland. Not sweet, and not much malt character. We'll see....

After around 36 hours, active fermentation has begun, with thin white krausen forming on the top of the beer.

Raspberry-Brett Saison

Originally planned as a cherry-brett saison, this one transformed into a raspberry beer since I could not find fresh sour cherries. In any case this beer is now a few months old and ready to drink.

Appearance: Medium pink in color with thin white head. Nearly clear but slight haze. Stunning body color, with hings of yellow pils malt color at the bottom of the glass. Lots of bubbles are rising to the surface from the bottom of the glass.
 
Aroma: Pronounced raspberry essence with bretty funk in the nose. A bit of a dry acidic quality. The raspberry aroma is not overpowering of the bretty funk - leaving a pretty balanced aroma. Not clear how much of the aroma is bretty fruit esters or raspberry.

Taste: Again good mix of raspberry taste with some acidic and tannic quality, but mixed with bretty funk. Dry. Bitterness is medium and it is a herbal, floral character. Fortunately the flavors all meld pretty well together. Malt flavors are very low as the fruit, yeast, and hops are the stars here.

Mouthfeel: Dry, a little tannic and fairly light and well carbonated.

Overall: This turned out very well. It's well balanced between the different flavor elements involved. The raspberry blends well with the brett and the bitterness. I may bottle a bit more of this to see how it ages, but otherwise I like it fresh. Will bring bottles to the brew club meetings to see what the club members have to say.

Brett-Cherry Saison Brewday

There was a bottle of really good cherry-fruit beer at a meeting of one the homebrew clubs of which I am a member. The person who brought it had traded for it, and I think it was Wisconsin Belgian Red. In any case I was inspired to brew a brett-cherry saison. The malt bill is nearly identical to my previous brett-saison, but with a different strain of brett, slightly more late hop additions, and obviously with the planned additions of cherries. I was planning to use some Brett C but the local shop didn't have it, and the GigaYeast Tart Cherry Brett sounded perfect for this beer, for obvious reasons. The ABV on this one will be at least 7% after the addition of the cherries, nearly double the ABV of the New Glarus beer. Oops, I probably should have considered that.

Not sure what form the cherries will take - frozen, puree, fresh, etc... It depends on availability. Puree would probably make for the easiest handling and lowest amount of fermenter loss.

Also I've been trying to tweak my planned volume amounts, ideally to get 5.5 gallons of clear, non-truby wort into the fermenter. But that didn't quite happen here.

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Brett-Cherry Saison
Style: Saison

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.62 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.50 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal  
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 4.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 74.6 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
9 lbs                 Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)            Grain         1        72.0 %       
2 lbs                 Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)                Grain         2        16.0 %       
1 lbs                 Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)             Grain         3        8.0 %        
8.0 oz                Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM)         Sugar         4        4.0 %        
0.75 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min        Hop           5        18.7 IBUs    
0.50 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min        Hop           6        4.5 IBUs     
1.00 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min         Hop           7        1.1 IBUs     
1.0 pkg               Tart Cherry Brett (Giga Yeast #GB002)    Yeast         8        -            
4.20 lb               Cherries (Secondary 0.0 mins)            Flavor        9        -            


Mash Schedule: 150F, Mash Out, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 8.0 oz
----------------------------
Name                    Description                                          Step Temperat Step Time    
Mash Step               Add 16.00 qt of water at 162.8 F                     150.0 F       60 min       
Mash Step               Add 9.60 qt of water at 203.7 F                      168.0 F       10 min       

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 2.91gal) of 168.0 F water

Notes:
------
1/2 tsp gympsum, 1/2 tsp CaCl to mash water, a little less to sparge water.

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Low gravity starter made on 4/13/16, with yeast nutrient. By brew day there was no visible activity but I did get some nice bretty smells from the starter.

Brewed 4/16/16.

Hit my mash temp. Pre-boil OG was ~1.044 (pre-sugar),  ~1.046 (post-sugar), on target. Post-boil OG was ~1.065, a bit high, likely due to underestimation of boil-off.

Brewing went smoothly except that I had to disassemble, clean, lube and reassemble my grain mill to get it to work properly.

Force cooled to 120F, racked to better bottle, and accidentally chilled all the way to 33F in my chest freezer.

On 4/17/16, pitched yeast at 33F and shook the carboy a bit, then allowed to warm to 68F for start of fermentation. May increase to 70F tomorrow. I don't want a heavily oxygenated wort for brett since that can produce too much acidity or other weirdness.

There was about 5.4 gallons in the fermenter, a little less than planned, and although most of the wort I racked was trub-free, I did get a bit of hot-break material in the wort.

5/7/16: Visibly active fermentation occurred from April 19 - April 30, with temperature ramping from 68F - 70F. As of 5/7/16 quite a bit of yeast and trub has settled to the bottom but the beer remains turbid with yeast. Will rack next week and at some point add the cherries.

5/15/16 - Racked to secondary. Carried some yeast into the new vessel. 

6/20/16 - I was away on vacation at the time that fresh sour cherries were available, and I couldn't find any frozen ones. So I added 36oz of frozen raspberries instead to the secondary fermenter.

Brett C Saison Review

Appearance: Billowing, dense and persistent white head. Body is light golden-yellow color. Chill haze but by no means muddy or unappealing.

Aroma: Earthy, with some lemony aroma and funkiness. Not especially strong. Hop aroma is very low but I think I smell some noble hop quality. As it warms a little the brett and fruity smells comes out better.

Taste: More complex than the nose. Starts fairly clean, with some fruit quality (maybe tart apples) but certainly not as fruity as the saisons I have brewed with WLP330.  Lightly bready wheat malts in the middle, slight yeastiness, and then some funky brett tastes. I don't think it has the "classic" brett tastes, but maybe some light acidity, dryness, and prickly quality. Almost tastes slightly tannic. Does not taste like a "clean" beer to me. Bitterness blends pretty well with the brett funk.

Mouthfeel:  Dry body, high-ish carbonation, and dry finish.

Overall: Not really sure what it is "supposed" to be so it's hard to judge. To me it's pleasant and Belgian-y but I think it could use a little more fruity quality. According to someone whose judgement I trust it has a classic Belgian quality.

I put ~2 gallons in bottles and ~3 in a keg. Will allow some bottles to age and see how they develop. 

Brett C Saison Brew Day

This beer is a club recipe for a brett experiment. A bunch of people will use an identical grain bill but different strains of yeast, some with brett only and some with brett in secondary only. There's going to be a lot of bretty beer when the experimental beers are tasted.

Brett C Saison
5 gallons
10# Pils
1# Munich Dark
0.5# Torrified Wheat
0.5# Cane Sugar

.75 oz Magnum, 12.4%, 60min
1oz Santiam, 6%, Whirlpool

Brett C primary

Mash at 150F.

Expected OG/FG/IBU/ABV: 1.062 / 1.090 / 29 / 6.9%

7/19/15
Made starter with 1L water, 100g DME, and yeast nutrient. Pitched 1 vial of Brett C (WLP 645) 68F ambient.

7/20/15
No signs of fermentation yet.

7/23/15
Again no apparent signs that the starter is fermenting. Shook starter a bit. I've heard that Brett usually works way more slowly that brewer's yeast. I hope that I will have enough of it to get a good primary ferment with it.

7/25/15
The starter had a ring of trub gunk where the beer meets the side of the flask, indicating that fermentation has passed high krausen.

 Brewed 7/26
Brew day didn't go smoothly due to equipment issues and using my buddy's system rather than my own. No gravity readings etc. Long cooling period necessitated pitching the day after brewday.

7/27
Got  ~5.1 gallons into the carboy, but not much trub. Pitched decanted starter at 68F and let set in 70F ambient to begin fermentation. 

7/28
About 24 hours after pitching, the fermentation was going very vigorously. Continuous airlock bubbling and lots of churning due to CO2 production. I guess I was totally wrong to be concerned about not having enough brett yeast in the starter. 

7/29 
Fermentation going, but less vigorously.


8/1
Fermentation is no longer causing air lock bubbling, but bear is still turbid with yeast.

8/24
Racked to secondary.

Funky Table Saison Review

The Snowpacolypse has descended upon the Boston area. What better thing to do than review a batch of homebrew!

For my first experiment with a brett beer I brewed a 1.045 saison with WLP565 and brett. c., in October 2012. The idea was for a light, refreshing but tasty beer that wouldn't need as much time as a stronger brett beer for the flavors to develop.

Appearance: Orange - golden in color with a moderate foam on top. Slight haze. The foam slowly dissipates to a thin covering fed by numerous bubbles moving up to the surface. Good lacing on the side of the glass.

Aroma: Fruity but subtle. Maybe bananas, pineapple or other tropical fruits. The brett is subtle but noticeable.

Taste:A fruity taste with a slight acidity to the aftertaste. To my tongue it does not have the characteristic brett phenols, but it does have some pepperyness.

Mouthfeel: Moderate carbonation. Probably should be more carbed. Body is light, but not as light as some commercial saisons I've sampled.

Overall: A refreshingly light and fruity beer with low-to-moderate brett characteristics, at least to my tongue. Fruity smell, slight acidity, and a little bit of bretty aftertaste. Low hop presence. Probably most appropriate for a hot summer day.

Note that I did get some feedback from the guys at a homebrewing club meetup. They said that while the beer is pretty good and quite drinkable, for the style it is a tad sweet and needs a little bit more hop aroma to balance out the fruit brett character. I like this beer quite a bit but perhaps I'll try next time to use more late addition hops or even dry hop in order to get a little more hop aroma.

Funky Table Saison Brewday

I would like to do a beer with a Brettanomyces twist, but without having to wait a really long time. This means keeping the gravity low, as I have read from several sources that for every 10 gravity points above 1.020 you should secondary the beer for an additional month to let the Brettanomyces work its magic. (After primary for 4 weeks). Otherwise the flavors may not fully develop or you may get beer that becomes dangerously overcarbonated (ie bottle-bombs).

The most prominent homebrewing funk-master in my mind is The Mad Fermentationist. I have been inspired by some of his recipes, such as his Funky Low Gravity Saison. As I understand it the basic idea is to make a saison in the 1.040 OG range and ferment with a combination of WLP645 Brett c. and WLP565 Saison. I'm going for a strong brett taste to get a sense of what that micro-critter is all about.

For this brew I based the grain bill of the BCS Saison recipe but scaled it down a bit to hit a 1.041 OG, with slightly reduced hopping. A little bit of acid malt and a 152F mash temp is part of the picture so that the brett has some good material with which to create its characteristic funkiness. The plan is to primary for about 4 weeks around 70F, followed by a secondary for 2-3 months. I hope the beer will be ready in February '13.

Funky Mini-Saison
3.25 gallons

3# Belgian Pilsner
1# Wheat Malt
0# 4oz Cane Sugar
0# 4oz DME (I forgot to get Munich Malt at the LHBS. That was dumb.)
0# 6oz Crystal 40L
0# 4oz Acid Malt
----
5.125# Total Fermentables

1/2 tsp. gypsum
152F Mash Temp
90min boil

5/8oz Hallertau, 3.9%AA, 60 mins
3/8oz Hallertau, 3.9% AA, 15 mins
1/2 tsp. Irish moss, 15 mins

WLP565 - Belgian Saison I
WLP645 - Brett c. 

Expected OG: 1.042 
Expected IBUs: 21


10/4/12
Made a starter with WLP565 from the previous saison and with WLP645 Brett. c. 

10/5/12
The starter was fermenting nicely with a moderate krausen by 7:30am.Started the mash around 7:50a and hit the 152F temp right on. Got 2.25gal of 1st runnings, as I was aiming for. Hit my pre-boil volume target of 4.5gal too.

Pre-boil OG without the sugar or DME was 1.030 at 4.5 gallons. That is about 76% efficiency. My system seems to get better efficiency on lower gravity brews. Added the sugar and DME with about 75mins left in the boil.

Used the IC to get the wort to 110F. Placed brew kettle in 65F water with some ice-packs to cool it to pitching temps.
   
Pitched when beer was at 70F, then placed fermentor in bin of 66F water for primary fermentation. Ended up with 3.4 gallons, or 3.5 with the starter thrown in. I have 5 cups (.3125 gal) of trub left in the bucket.

If my calculations and measurements are correct this all works out to a boil-off rate of .525 gallons / hour for my set-up on a rigorous boil. I need to figure that exact number into my calculations the next time I brew so that I get the right volumes.

Also, according to my rough calculation, because of the greater mash efficiency than expected, I should still have about the right OG of 1.042 - 1.045.

Pitched around 3pm. By 11:30 that evening the airlock was bubbling fairly actively.

10/19/12
Transferred to secondary. The gravity was at 1.006 - pretty low but I hope there's something left for the brett to munch on over the next few months. The sample tasted OK but definitely "green" and in need of more flavor development. I got a bit more than 3 gallons into the Better Bottle.  

1/18/13
Bottled with 68g of sugar, going for 2.4 volumes of CO2. The beer was all the way down to 1.003. I got slightly more than three gallons in a bunch of 22oz bombers and a few 16oz bottles. I will try the beer in a couple of weeks. 

Saison Tasting

Hoping to duplicate my surprisingly successful saison (my fourth ever brew), last month I brewed another saison from the same Brewing Classic Styles recipe. I do not however expect the results to be the same, since there has probably been quite a bit of variation in my ingredients (due to the way the LHBS sold grains) and process (due to my poor fermentation temperature control) between the two brews. Nevertheless, I will be happy if this attempt is as good as my previous one.

Appearance: Hazy golden copper with a thick white head that dissipates but leaves a thin layer of bubbles over the beer. This bottle was only in the fridge for around 8 hours, so the chill haze may be reduced after more time in the fridge.

Aroma: Fruit of some kind. A combination of bananas and other yeasty esters, maybe plums. Some sweetness in the smell.

Taste: Fruity and a bit phenolic, but not unpleasantly so. A slightly "hot" aftertaste and almost a slightly sour or funky note. Slight sweetness. Kind of refreshing. A slight hint of noble-hop bitterness with attendant earthy notes.

Mouthfeel: A little bit too heavy for the style. Could use some more carbonation in my view. Not as spritzy as the style is supposed to be, but my wife and other taster did find it refreshing.

Overall: A light, fruity beer with yeasty notes and a moderately refreshing quality. Not spritzy, but well carbonated. Slight funkiness from the yeast phenolics. Pleasant, but not great. Needs a lighter body and it should be drier.

For Next Time: Control the fermentation temps better to get higher attenuation and thus less sweetness. More carbonation to get a more spritzy mouthfeel.

 

Saison Brewday

I brewed the Saison recipe from Brewing Classic Styles last summer. It turned out very well. One of my best brews and closely resembling Saison DuPont, at least to my palette. The beer also tasted to me very similar to a hefeweissen but without so much of the banana overtones and sweet bready body. In any case I hope to duplicate my success, although I suspect the results of this one will be different, especially considering my temperature control issues.

Saison
3.25 gallon batch
6# 2oz Belgian Pils
0# 8oz Munich Malt
0# 8oz Wheat Malt
0# 8oz Cane Sugar
0# 1oz Caramunich 60L
--------
7# 11oz fermentables
(Only 6# 3oz in mash, add sugar during boil). 

1oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, 60 mins
.5oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, flameout

Brookline, MA water, with 1/2 tsp gypsum
1/2 tsp Irish moss @ 15 min

90 minute mash at 147F
90 minute boil to drive off DMS
Target pre-boil volume is 4.25 gallons

27 IBUs
Expected OG / FG: 1.065 / 1.004 at 70% efficiency

WLP56 - Belgian Saison I, start fermentation at 68F and allow to free rise over the course of 3-4 week primary to 80F or more.

7/28/12, 11:40am
Dough in with 2.25 gal at 158F. Ten minutes later the mash was right where I wanted it, at 147F. Aiming for a dry beer here.

1:10pm, added .96 gal boiling mash-out water.

2:20pm, boil started. Pre-boil OG was 1.049 at 4.25 gallons. (Including the sugar.) Approximately 70% efficiency, as I was hoping. If the final volume is 3.25 gal this will hit my target OG right on.

4:15pm, wort was around 100F. Placed in 70F basement to cool before transferring to fermenter and pitching, which I will probably do later this evening. My wort chiller still leaks at a few places. Extremely annoying.

7:00pm, transferred wort to plastic bucket and aerated. The wort was like 80F or so but I put the bucket into a bin filled with 65F water and some ice blocks. Pitched yeast. Got very slightly less than 3 gallons.

7/29/12, 6:45pm
No bubbling in the airlock yet, but clearly the pressure in the bucket is building up because the airlock is looking like bubbles will soon start coming. Also the wort is sitting in 68F water.

7/30/12, 4pm
I was getting really worried that something was wrong because there were no bubbles in the airlock. I opened the top of the bucket to see a thick krausen with lots of yeast on top. After I replaced the bucket and airlock there were lots of bubbles. There was probably an air leak somewhere. Anyway. the bucket is in a pool of 70F water. In a couple of days I will take the beer to a warmer place, like the attic or garage, for it to ferment at the warm temps necessary for it to completely finish with the right fruity / spicy mix.

7/31/12, 4pm
Active fermentation appears to have stopped or dramatically slowed. Moved fermenter and bin of water to the garage, where ambient temps are currently 75F. During the days the temps will likely go to the mid-80s and at night will be in the high-60s. At any rate I hope that the high temps will encourage the fussy saison yeast to complete fermentation. Last time I brewed this beer, for the first few days of fermentation I kept the fermenter in cool water and then took it out. The bucket sat in my apartment, which probably never went below 75F and during the afternoons probably went up to the 85F - 90F range as the sun came through the windows. The beer turned out well that time. I hope to repeat that success.

8/18/12
After three weeks of fermenting the gravity was down to 1.005. Great! The beer had a good estery smell but I detected a slightly sulfury quality which I hope will go away. Bottled with 2.6oz sugar. Got slightly less that 3 gallons. Collected some of the leftover yeast for use in an upcoming funky table saison, which I plan to ferment with WLP565 and Brettanomyces.