Champagne yeast?

Why do you want to do this?

 

Champagne yeast won't make your beer more dry.
It also won't IMO do much if anything for flavor. What flavor are you looking for?

 

You don't pitch champagne yeast in beer.
Champagne yeast is for champagne. There is no reason to use it as a primary strain for beer. This is one area of brewing that you really should be discouraged from trying. There are dozens of great beer yeasts to use. Using champagne yeast to get a dry beer or to get anything is one of the more popular misconceptions in homebrewing.

Now if you want to try champagne yeast to get a stuck fermentation going again or maybe as a bottling strain, then maybe just maybe you would use champagne yeast. But even then it's a mediocre choice.
Not trying to be negative just steering you in a different direction.
Cheers.

 

Champagne yeast won't do anything to help your beer.
Dont worry though, 3711 will get your beer plenty dry on its own.

 

You might prime your beer with Champagne yeast add to the finish fermented beer. That might bee interesting experiment.

 

If you want to dry the beer out, add a completely fermentable source like dextrose (corn sugar), raw sugar or honey. Add 8oz or so of sugar/honey in place of a comparable gravities worth of some of the extract/grain and the final beer will be dryer. I use 8oz - 1lb of honey in many of my saisons and couldn't be happier.

As for the champagne yeast, take everyone else's advice and just leave it for making champagne, meads and maybe a dry cider. It will not make a good beer and will only drop the quality of your final beer. I tried it once when I was a newbie because it was cheap and it became one of the only batches I've ever dumped.

 

The only time champagne yeast is useful in beer brewing is for bottle priming some high gravity brew that has been sitting a while and the primary yeast are not of much use anymore.

Champagne yeast will not metabolize the sugars (maltotrios? someone correct me if I have that sugar wrong) that would leave a high final gravity. It will not dry your beer out. One of the reasons it is good for bottle priming.

I think most champagne yeast produce the kill factor. Not sure if 3711 is sensitive to kill factor, but something to consider.

Give 3711 some time and your terminal gravity will be below 1.005 and probably lower. 3711 starts out fast but takes a while to finish out.

 

That was my immediate reaction. My Saisons virtually always finish damn near 1.000 with 3711, even without added sugar. That's plenty dry, IMO.

 

Hope this doesn't get dinged, but FWIW I used Lalvinn EC Champagne yeast in a cider last year that turned out great. Super dry and tart, and didn't interfere with the apple flavor, which is what I was wanting. Since you want a lot of those classic saison phenols for your beer, I'd stick with 3711 for this one. You don't want a saison that doesn't have any yeast-driven flavors whatsoever, trust me. 3711 will get you an FG below 1.000 if you pitch a fermentable enough wort.

 

http://www.danstaryeast.com/articles/specific-wine-yeast-strains

Just playing devil's advocate

 

Everyone is so appalled by the Champagne Yeast. I'm more bummed about the use of 3711.

 

What is it that you are advocating?

 

That someone might want to experiment with champagne yeast?

 

If the OP (or anyone) wants to experiment with champagne yeast, that's cool. But they shouldn't expect it to attenuate the wort further than their main beer yeast strain already would/did (if co-pitching), or even as far as any beer yeast strain would (if using the champagne yeast by itself).

 

I've always heard champagne yeast will 1. destroy/eat most sacc strains and also that it will 2. lurch around after sanitizing, especially in plastic fermenters, and infect future batches. I use my sour/funky gear whenever I use champagne yeast to keep it away from my clean beers, and have dedicated fermenters for when I ferment other beverages with champagne yeast. Anybody have anything to prove or disprove those 2 statements? I've always just assumed what I've heard was accurate and kept things separated, but as a scientist I'm always up for some empirical evidence to change my point of view.

 

I do not have any "empirical evidence" here but I have always wondered about claims that there are 'super microorganisms' that can survive a proper sanitation process vs. other non-super microorganisms like Sacch, Wild Yeast, Bacteria that can infect beer, etc.

In other words, shouldn't proper sanitation provide an adequately 'clean' environment for a batch of beer?

When I ferment a batch of beer using US-05 I do not worry about contamination from the yeast strain I used from the prior batch in my bucket since I sanitize that bucket. Why would Champagne yeast be different in this regard?

Cheers!

 

Artificial selection could create a "super microorganism" over time, just like some viruses or bacteria become more dangerous/virulent/resistant over time naturally. And I've always read and heard that champagne yeast is generally a mixed culture that contains more than the traditional brewing sacc. So I can see how it could evolve into a super microorganism(s) over time, especially in the long lived wine industry. I've also heard that Pediococcus can survive sanitizing and that some breweries have had to shut down and spend a lot of time, money and effort to eradicate a pedio infection. So it seems that there ARE the possibilities, at least through common knowledge (I haven't attempted to do a lit review on the topic, nor have I searched for one that was completed), for the possibility of super microorganisms.