printemps houblonné - saison - all grain

That will make a tasty beer. The only change I would make is your bittering hop choice. Only because it’s a shame to boil off all the wonderful flavor of Nelson Sauvin. Plus those things are freaking pricey these days (if you can even find them).

 

It looks good to me. The point about not using Nelson for bittering is a consideration. You also might skip the Demerara. I’m not sure the small amount you are using will register in this beer. However, I wouldn’t use a large amount of sugar with this yeast strain because it is highly attenuative.

 

Agreed with both of these things. No reason to use Nelson as anything other than a whirlpool hop. Use some Magnum or Horizon for some clean bitterness and using sugar in a beer that is going to be fermented with a diastaticus strain is a recipe for a very thin beer. Might think of replacing it with lactose or maltodextrin, though, just to increase the body a little, but maybe the OP is going for a beer with very little residual extract?

 

That's what I'd do, but it's just personal preference. Nothing hard and fast.

I'd replace it with some other malts.

Not to make this a treatise on brewing science, but the reason var. distaticus attenuates so well is that it can use maltotriose, a sugar that is three units long. Most "normal" sacch. strains can only use sugars two units long or less. If you wondered why, it is because it has an enzyme that most other sacch. strains don't, called maltotriose specific alpha glucosidase. However, all saccharomyces cerevisiae strains preferentially use glucose until all the glucose in solution is exhausted.

All that said, if you want this beer to have some body, there are two things that you can do. The first is to try to have longer chain sugars in your wort. The other is to stimulate your yeast to make glycerol, to which this strain is already predisposed.

 

In my experience all of my saisons with sugar or not and fermented with a var.diastaticus strain like 3711 or belle saison still have body remaining. Never felt they were overly thin despite finishing around 1.000 nearly every time. YMMV but I thought I remember reading a scientific reason there was the perception of body remaining in the beer that had to do with biproducts created by saison yeast. Also saisons are a style sort of known for being dry and champagne like as far as I’m concerned.

 

What can homebrewers do to stimulate glycerol production?

 

It was, very probably, that they are high glycerol producers.

Overpitching, creating a wort that is high gravity and high in simple sugars, and increasing your temperature of fermentation are probably the easiest ways to do it. That said, the strain of yeast used is the most important factor. Here's some neat reading about it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648866/

 

@EvenMoreJesus yes that’s what I was looking for, thanks. With these glycerol producing yeast do you still fear that adding some sugar will make the body thin?

 

Actually there's a weird dichotomy with adding sugar to these high glycerol producing fermentations, because although sugar will thin out the beer it will also encourage glycerol production, so the two kind of balance out, IMO.

 

Ya I don’t go crazy on sugar with my Belgians in general but saisons always get a half a pound of regular sugar.

 

Maybe save a 1/2oz of that Nelson for dry hop. I like a little bit of dry hop in my saisons.

 

I did a straight pils grist, magnum for bittering, and dryhopped with 3 oz of Nelson and the beer was amazing. I used wyeast Belgian saison because I despise the French. Ymmv.

 

I'm not an expert on this, but I wonder whether when using very attenuative yeasts like 3711, it's a good idea to roll the IBUs off a bit from the level that would normally give you the sort of perceived bitterness that you're after. I've certainly had a similar thing to what you describe with a few beers that used Belle Saison in the past.

And yes, I realize that this would probably have been more helpful about a month ago...

 

Glad it worked out for you. Try the recipe next time and just try a different yeast. Should be a good way to see which you prefer. Saisons are an awesome style to fool around with cause they are very hard to mess up.

 

Lessons I have learned from messing up saisons (and not messing them up):

1. The Belgian yeast strain (in this case WLP565), does not necessarily need high temps. contrary to reputation for loving heat, it does not make a great beer when you let the temp rise to 100F (was not my goal; temp control failed). Patience is the best tool for taming this yeast and evoking those saison flavors that I Iike.
2. The French saison strain (3711) should be avoided. My first attempt resulted in a shocking, nearly 100% apparent attenuation in a 1.065 beer. 8.4% ABV was way more than I wanted, and in a thin bodied beer, there was no hiding the booze. But my biggest complaint with this yeast, from a few subsequent batches when I was more prepared for the attenuation, is that the flavor profile is lackluster. Give me a glass of a nice 565/3724 beer any day. Or better yet, WLP 585 (RIP).
3. There may be more to making a good Brett saison than co-pitching a vial of Brett with 3724. I enjoyed a good commercial example a few years back (or maybe I just thought I did because I spent 15 dollars on a bottle), but haven't homebrewed one yet that really sang to me. I have unfinished business.

A lot of this comes down to preference. I mean, in these examples, I made beer. I just didn't love it.