suggestions for scheduling secondary/bottling on Saison

No need to wait that long unless you have to. You could rack it next week or the 28th. A couple thoughts. I did a 5 gallon batch of Saison that I added 3# of apricot puree to and ended up with 3 gallons of beer due to all the fruit debris, not a whole lot of apricot flavor/aroma, bottle bombs, and sulfur. Stone fruits can throw off sulfur if the fruit gets into the bottles and isn't fermented all the way. If doing 2.5 gals with enough apricots to get the desired flavor/aroma you might get 1 gallon at bottling. I say this, and yet I am planning on sending 4 gallons of a sour blonde onto fresh apricots this summer. I've had a green tea Saison before that was nice, but not great, but then they didn't actually use a Saison yeast to make the beer either so it was more of a green tea belgian blonde. If it were me, I would bottle half, then choose one of the other options to try out now. Rebrew it again if you really like it straight, and split it again doing the other option. That way, if the tea doesn't work out and the apricots flop you at least got to drink 5 gals worth of good Saison.

 

Yes do some research on here or the "other forum" before adding anything strange. I am tempted to say just bottle this one alone like most other people but I know that if you are anything like me the temptations is too great to experiment since that is why we get into homebrewing.

Use a beer thief to taste a sample after 2 weeks and see what you think, if it is boring or lacking then you can mess with it. I have had a beer in the fermenter that I planned on flavoring, but tasted so damn good I did not want to mess with it. I taste my beers out of the fermenter all of the time, I see it as a chef tasting something while cooking to see what, if anything is missing.

 

You could always just add flavoring to the beer instead of the fruit. In this case it would save you time and you would not have to worry about messing the beer up with off flavors.

To answer your actual question, letting the beer sit too long on the yeast could cause some off flavors from yeast autolysis (cell death). That being in my experience Saisons take a long time in primary (2 weeks) to being with so letting it go a little longer might not hurt it too much. If the yeast are still living to 2 weeks out then I would assume it would take them a longer time to start dying as well.

 

Your schedule is fine, a bit extra time wont hurt the beer at all

I would suggest adding raspberries to a portion with a very very light touch, I did this recently in a petite saison and it turned out amazing. I wish I had used a little bit less raspberry in mine than I did, say only 12 oz instead of 18

 

I don't believe in prescribed times for primary fermentation. A beer is done when it hits terminal gravity, i.e., when the yeast stop fermenting. With saisons, patience can be important, depending on yeast (see recent saision thread). If you are using 3711, two weeks is probably going to get you where you need to be; if you are using 3724, could be another story. Normally, I do not secondary, but the details of your experiment require it. Be sure that you reach terminal gravity before you tranfer. Check for stability with your hydrometer or refractometer a few times, with a couple days inbetween. Call it done when you get two stable readings in a row, provided the gravity is where you want it. If not, wait some more to see if it is slowly changing.

In the secondary: not sure I would like the tea. The apricots sound good to me, though.

 

My personal experience with 3711 brewing 1.060 OG Saison beers is that primary fermentation has always been complete in less than a week. I have always let my 3711Saison beers sit in the primary for two weeks (1 week of ferment and 1 week of bulk conditioning).

3711 has always created very dry Saison beers for me. My Final Gravity has always been around just a few points above 1.000 (e.g., something like 1.002).

Cheers!

 

I believe that several years ago BA Old Sock (the homebrewer behind the mad fermentationist blog) brewed a batch of something funky with dried cherries soaked in brandy. I think the apricot wine thing could work out, although I don't have any idea how much apricots and soaking you would need to do to get the impact I would want on beer. If you figure it out or any others have a clue, I hope it gets posted.