I’d be interested to know if anyone has had good results brewing saison with yeast harvested from the dregs of a bottle of Saison Dupont. I’d just bottled a batch when I came across this blog:
[quote]Dupont’s brews are then either bottled or kegged. For bottling, a different yeast strain than that used for primary is used to spark a refermentation in the bottle.
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So I’m wondering what the heck I’ve brewed…
I don’t know what Dupont uses, but a lot of breweries that use a different yeast use lager yeast. So, you wind up with some sort of non-lager ale if you brew with it.
Something with sparkling white wine yeast? 
That’s what I use on the rare occasion where I re-yeast at bottling. Bullet-proof yeast that imparts no flavors as far as I can tell.
I think they bottle condition warm, so a wine yeast might be more likely than a lager. It fermented very aggressively - down to 1009 in less than a week. Definitely not the strain that drags its feet and stalls. Lots of banana ester at the moment. Fortunately I only made a gallon as an experiment.
After you package it up please report back with how close you think it may be to a “saison” strain.
I’ll let you know after it’s had a month in the bottle.
On a related note, I will probably be driving through Belgium in a couple of weeks, so if anyone can recommend the best breweries to visit I would be interested to know.
I’ve only visited the Straffe Hendrik one in Bruges/Brugge. Visited Westvleteren, but only went to the cafe to stock up on booze.
I’ve tried brewing with dregs from bottles of Dupont. I was never particularly over the moon about what I got. I’m not sure if that’s because there’s a dominant bottling strain or culturing from the bottle results in a different blend of primary yeast. I just couldn’t get enough flavor out of it. I think the better approach is to make a starter with 3724 and add dregs from bottles of saison vieille and try to get the balance of yeast closer to Dupont’s actual culture.
What is best is probably more of a question of what is best for you and how ambitious you want to be. Your preference for Trappist (or abbey)/saison/sour/white could easily produce a significantly different list of breweries.
I’d like to stop at Bruges so might check out Straffe Hendrik if I have time.
I suspect I will have the same problem. I’m pretty sure the bottling strain is dominant as the beer is centrifuged and filtered before bottling. And I reckon the pure Wyeast and Whitelabs strains might even be better than Dupont’s mixed culture for flavour anyway - I think they picked the best strain, if the trickiest one. I think next time I’ll start with 3724 and then add a second yeast when it stalls - either 3711, Nottingham or the bottle-harvested yeast.
I bottled a saison made with WLP565 this weekend. Kept it at 18c for the first few days, then ramped it by 2c each day up to 28c. It went from 1060 to 1006 in 21 days. Just covered the grommet for the airlock with some sanitised foil. No problems with stalling.
Couple of fantastic pubs in Bruges too. Brugs beertje, and cafe rose red.
Yes I think the trick is to allow some air in as well.as keeping it warm. I’d like to try it cooler too, just out of curiosity, but might need a standby yeast if it gives up.
As I understand it, the Dupont strain actually has 2 strains in its blend. WY 3724 is one and WL 565 is the other (maybe Mark will chime in with some more accurate info on this for us).
I have never had an issue with WL 565 stalling on me, ever. Instead it seems to ferment out quite normally for a saison strain given proper temp control. On the other hand, I have had stalling in the first generation with WY 3724 every single time I have used it, regardless of the gravity. Time and temp control help to finish out dry eventually (usually around 5-6 wks in primary). With that being said, the second pitch of this strain does seem to work faster (2-3 wks) and finish more appropriately.
I do prefer WY 3724 over WL 565 though. Just my opinion.
If I brew another Saison this summer I’m planning on pitching both WY3724 and WL565.
This. 565, after learning about Drew’s Saison primer and keeping the airlock off for the first few days (assuming a well aerated wort and healthy pitch), has never stalled on me. In fact, I’ve fermented it at 66F for 3 weeks steady and got down to 1.002. Using 565 at lower temperatures for a long time gives a really clean but kind of one-dimensional saison flavor, I’ve found. It’s dry as a bone, a bit tart (probably due to mash pH control, I like shooting for 5.2 in the mash), a just straight-ahead phenolic/green pepper bite and that’s it. Nice and clean, but not something that’s going to wow anyone. Pushing the temperatures up a bit after the first few days is when you get some more complexity from that yeast.
One thing I’ll never do again is ferment 565 warm right from the get go. Awful, awful stuff. That or I wasn’t patient enough to let it settle down and meld in the bottle over time. I don’t have the desire to try again though to find out.
I’ve read resources that suggest there are four strains within Dupont’s house culture. Two are more flavor forward while the other two handle more of the workload drying out the beer. That makes sense if the primary flavor yeast tends to stall out because other yeast can step in and complete fermentation.
3724 and 565 are the same yeast–at least they began by isolating the same component of Dupont’s culture. White Labs sells 566 which is widely understood to be the other flavor forward strain in Dupont’s culture. I don’t think Wyeast sells anything else out of Dupont’s culture.
Any fan of the style owes it to himself to try 3726/Blaugies.
Interesting. Sounds very much like Wyeast 3711 if you ferment cold.
I might try and visit this brewery but they only open once a month, so timing might not work out.