Recently brewed a hoppy saison using WLP670. I used the yeast to give the beer a sour/tart taste. I was going for a hoppy, tart dry beer. Anyways, I will be serving the beer March 2 and has been fermenting for 2 weeks. I have never used this yeast and have only brewed a few batch of saison, in which I didn’t add finings. WLP007 is blend with a traditional farmhouse yeast and Brett. I know the Brett character will be minimal with such short fermentation time but I am already getting a tart character, which is what I want. My question is should I add any finings to clear the beer? Most if not all saison/farmhouse ales seem to be cloudy. If I don’t add any gelatin would the yeast add some additional esters and tartness to the beer? Thoughts?
In my limited experience with 670 I didnt find that the brett brought anything to the table, even after over a year in the bottle. I wouldn't worry about fining the beer at all.
Yeast, unless we're talking about lower levels, always changes the flavor of the beer. Now before anyone gets up in arms, try this: take a beer that's bottle conditioned and been allowed to sit and sediment, and pour one glass (or a few) with the clear beer that you'll initially get, and then pour a glass with the yeast added in and taste them side by side. In my opinion leaving the yeast in will not add additional esters (those are formed during fermentation), nor will it add additional tartness. If anything, if you've got too much yeast it will dull the beer which is not a good thing. That's not to say that I suggest you fine the beer unless it hasn't cleared to a reasonable amount by the time you're ready to package it. However, having said that, I'm not familiar with WLP670 but I have used strains that just didn't want to drop out and fined them to get them a little bit clearer. It's like everything else, you want some but not too much - everything in moderation. A bit of yeast is usually better than a crystal clear beer, especially in Belgian styles, but too much can throw things off.
It was pretty meh IIRC. It wasn't a big ester producer, the brett didnt really show up ever, but I did hit it with a good bit of CTZ. No tartness either. I had better luck with HF dregs and both Dupont strains in later beers.
