The How My Averagely Perfect Saison Turned Out Thread

I still have around 3/4 of mine...still looking for more of the Brett.

 

I'd say I have about half of my batch left. I purposely stored a case on the back of a shelf so I wouldn't drink it too fast. It gets better each time I open one. I bottled on 5/28/15.

 

It's been drinking like a good saison all summer. I should have made a double batch.

 

I completely agree with that. It's been tough to leave sit...

 

So I am finally getting around to writing the results of my "experiment".

I brewed on 4/26, bottled on 5/17 and have been drinking/comparing versions ever since. I was a member of the "gang of 37" or what ever that label was. Originally I was planning on doing 10 gallons and splitting the brett between 644 (the original choice) and Orval dregs, but when I brewed with the 644 it seemed off.

So, I decided to do a different type of batch splitting. I brewed 12 gallons and split 3 ways, brett as a co-pitch, brett midway through fermentation and brett at bottling. Early on, I thought there was a difference, at this point I think I can say that it doesn't matter when you add the brett for this beer I should note, that my fermentation temps went haywire and were no where near where they were supposed to be. But, it ended up tasting like the other saisons where I have used Dupont dregs.

After 6 weeks, I wrote:
Very subtle differences at this point. The bottling addition has more brett character and is a little more dry, but not by much. The biggest difference is the brett seems to linger on the back of the tongue in the bottling addition vs. disappearing almost immediately in the co-pitch. The mid-pitch is somewhere in between. I suspect that the brett will become more pronounced in the bottling version over time while not much will change with the co-pitch.

Today (11/15/15)
So, it turns out I was wrong about how the brett was going to affect these beers. At this point, six months after bottling, the three beers are basically the same. Sometimes I think I detect differences, sometimes I don't. Based on this, I don't think there is a big difference in pitching times if you are also pitching Saccharomyces as well.



a little more detail and an earlier picture at my blog http://backpackandbeer.blogspot.com/2015/11/saison-5-averagely-perfect-saison.html