My First Sour - Saison Experiment

General Homebrew Discussion
1

I made a 3 gallon batch of Saison, (pils,wheat,cara, and saaz hops).  My OG was 1.032.  I pitched a pack of wyeast 3711 with no starter.

I racked into 3 separate one gallon jugs at 1.013 two weeks later:

Gallon A: wood chips I soaked in JD
Gallon B: 20oz Raspberries (half a pack of wyeast 3763 Roeselare - no starter)
Gallon C: 20oz Peaches (the other half of the wyeast 3763 Roeselare - no starter)

Just one week later:
Not too much happening with gallon A, but still very nice flavor/complexity.  But with B & C, I already have a lot of sourness.  I wanted it to be more on the ‘tart’ side and I feel that I’ve already achieved that in one week!?  Is that possible? Also, I feel that the complexity of the beer has gone down a lot. I get a lot of sour and peach/raspberry flavor and that’s about it, it’s really ‘in your face’.  (Maybe saison is too light for this yeast?)

When it comes to bottling; How and When?  I feel like I’m lost with how much sugar is in the jugs and how much still needs to be eaten by the yeasties… How long do I wait for fruit sugars to be consumed and if I bottle too early will I have bombs?  Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

2

The fruit will cover up some of the more delicate yeast flavor. However, you are a very long way off of having a stable, finished beer. Right now lactobacillus is eating the simple sugars from the fruit but you still have brett and pedio getting geared up to do a lot of work on that beer.

3

+1 to all of this ^

Lactobacillus can start to produce noticable acidity in a week or so. The brettanomyces strains will develop complexity for you, but it will take a few months.

Don’t be surprised if you need to add more fruit 6 months down the road because the brett character has developed and the fruit character has diminished.

This sounds like a neat experiment that should turn out an interesting session beer!