Never used this strain before. After reading up on its potential for stalling I took the following measures: Made a healthy starter, pitched warmer, used an opened ferment (carboy with just some sterilized foil covering mouth of the bottle), placed carboy in a hot water heater closet with temps in the 80’s, fingers crossed.
My question: After all these years of homebrewing I’ve never really had an overflow problem. Call me very lucky. Alas, under the above-mentioned conditions, sure enough, I had a puddle of krausen around the carboy this morning. I wiped it up, nothing a few paper towels couldn’t handle and now my hot water heater closet smells wonderful. However, I am inexperienced with this situation and I am wondering 1. could the overflow cause an infection (probably not right?), and 2. does the overflow cause a significant loss of yeast, enough that I now need to be concerned about fermentation finishing?
How did it turn out?
I love this yeast and use it as my main Saison goto. I’ve never had it stall, knock on wood. I generally use a fermenter with a lot of headspace. Pitch an active starter w plenty of 02. I pitch it at 65 and let it free rise to ambient. It, like most, get better with every generation. I did just get some 3726 to try for the first time. I keep trying others on split batches. I always return to this yeast.
I have used WLP-565 (the Dupont strain) in my Saison and have had it stall. Obviously I can’t do open fermentation. Yes, it does restart after about a week or so but I switched to Wyeast French Saison yeast (3711) a few years back and have had great results with it. Just another idea.
As a close friend, Frank Barickman, who owns the Restoration Breworks in Delaware, Ohio once told me, “it can’t get hot enough for a saison.” I start mine at about 75 degrees and let it free-rise to around 90 degrees. That way I get the desired phenolics in the beer and have won several medals with this process. My latest one started at 15 degrees Plato (1.061 for SG folks) for the and three days later is down to 1.65 (1.006) degrees Plato. It is still bubbling a bit so it should get down to 1 degree Plato in the next few days.
As another aside, I’ve had Belle Saison “stall” before. I think it’s the same as 3711. But figured out that it hadn’t really stalled, but just slows waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down for a few weeks before it hits its goal of 1.002. Just need patience with this one.
Keep in mind that the DuPont strain needs to be open fermented to avoid a stall. It was probably the most positive result we’ve gotten for any experiment we’ve done.
DuPont has always frustrated me. 3711 is ok but not the character I want. Just used saisonstein from omega labs. I think it’s a blend of the two. Fermented out great and tastes great. Might be my new saison yeast. And yes I’ve done open and hot with DuPont.