Help with extract saison

By mid 60s you mean about 65, right? If the ambient temp is 65, then the fermentation temp is likely to be in the upper 60s/very low 70s. At that temp, the beer will likely be fine, there are tons of reports of that yeast eating everything and I don't recall ever hearing anything about temperature issues. I'm not sure what kind of yeast character you will get at that temp.

You might give the dry yeast "Belle Saison" a try instead, it makes a very similar beer and the dry yeast is usually cheaper, plus no need for a starter.

 

I like hoppy saisons, but that is not for everyone. Do you have a specific example in mind? Or you just want a good summer beer?

For summer, I tend to go low gravity so I can drink more

I haven't put this in a calculator (you should), but something like this would be a good starting point
5# Pils DME
1oz of EKG or Hallertau or Saaz or Fuggles @ 60 mins
1oz of the same hops at 10 mins
1oz of the same hops at 0 mins (you could leave this out if you wanted)

If you want hoppy, use 2oz for each addition instead of 1oz.

 

I've been doing extract saisons for a while now. A couple things to think about.
Use pilsen dme to build your base, wheat is cool and all, but dme doesn't attenuate as well as pilsner wort. I like to add hops late, pick your poison here. Throw in a couple oz of noble hops from 15 minutes til flameout and dryhop for good measure if you want something more floral. If you like american hops dryhop with them. The effect is more subtle than utilizing them in the boil, avoiding the crossover into ipa territory. My last recipe read like this.
6lbs pilsen dme
2oz saaz at fwh
1oz saaz at 15
1oz saaz at 0
3oz nelson dryhop for 7 days.
I also let this one sit on light french oak spirals that were soaked in sauvignon blanc, but that's just optional. I also use wyeast belgian saison, never had problems with it, and it sits at 65-70 ambient air temperature. It's a great beer, dry and low abv makes it a great summer quencher.

 

First Wort Hopping. It means adding bittering hops to the kettle at the beginning of the lauter process when brewing All Grain. With extract, I guess the closest you could come to doing FWH would be adding the hops to your water before bringing it to a boil.

FWH results in slightly more IBUs (bitterness). Also, some (not I) claim it results in a "smoother" bitterness.

 

I first wort hop because it's easy. With extract fwh, in my eyes so it's probably wrong, would occur when you add your extract, after you have raised temps to almost boiling and killed the flame to avoid scorching the extract.
But a traditional 60 minute addition would be fine as well. Are you doing a full wort boil @Maestro0708

 

In this instance I would add half the DME at the beginning, and add the second half at the last five minutes. Hop utilization will be, for the most part, unaffected by halving the DME this way. Just don't forget to add the second addition of DME.

 

Yeah, anytime you do half boils I would apply that same practice. As for a longer boil, my guess is they are trying to drive off dms since most saisons utilize pilsner malt. Since you are using dme I don't think you'll need to worry about a longer boil.

 

There is nothing quite like Nelson. Maybe galaxy, or hallertauer blanc? It won't be the same, but it would still be funky and fruity.

 

Completely different from Nelson, but I like Cascade in a saison.

 

What does cascade bring to the party? Next time around my saison is getting grapefruit peel and pulp along with a healthy dose of nelson again.

 

Sorry, never used it. But looks like I should, sounds tasty.

 

I think the citrus in Cascades works really well in a saison, it goes especially well with WY3724. If you like actual grapefruit, you should try Cascade or Centennial. I suspect I have used Amarillo before, but I can't remember.