Help with stalled Saison

Brewed with a OG of .045, pitched two vials of 565.
Primary slowed and I pitched 3711 with 2lbs of honey. It's been 10 days since and I'm stuck at .0100. I was hoping to get to .003 at the least. Should I add another smackpack of 3711 but make a starter? Fermenting at SoCal daily temps in my garage in the mid 70's

Give it a little more time. Honey can sometimes take a little longer to fully ferment out. 3711 should take it down well below 1.010.

I wouldn't worry at 10 days but if it goes to 15-20 you might be stuck. Are you brewing extract or grain. If you're using grain it's possible your mash temp was high and you've got a lot of unfermentable sugars in there that will never ferment at all.

If you're sure the mash temp was on, or brewing extract, and you're sure you're stuck, try yeast energizer. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/yeast-energizer.html I had a batch stuck at 1.03 for 2 weeks recently and I used this with a half cup of sugar (boiled in water for sanitation) and it's been bubbling happily ever since. I'm down to 1.02 and falling.

I have always pushed the temp to upper 70's-low 80's to finish.

The yeast may have gotten a little tired consuming all that honey before it was done. Agitate it back into suspension and bump the temp into the 80's and it should finish up nicely

cernst151 said:

I wouldn't worry at 10 days but if it goes to 15-20 you might be stuck. Are you brewing extract or grain. If you're using grain it's possible your mash temp was high and you've got a lot of unfermentable sugars in there that will never ferment at all.

If you're sure the mash temp was on, or brewing extract, and you're sure you're stuck, try yeast energizer. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/yeast-energizer.html I had a batch stuck at 1.03 for 2 weeks recently and I used this with a half cup of sugar (boiled in water for sanitation) and it's been bubbling happily ever since. I'm down to 1.02 and falling.

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It's all grian, and my mash was 148 for 30minutes 146 for 30 minutes and 142 for 15 minutes before flysparging at 146.

Just swirled the keg to piss of whatever yeast got lazy. GET BACK TO WORK BITCHES!!!

I'll check it sunday and see where its at.
Will the dry hops change the hydro reading?

Why does your mash schedule decrease in temp? It should start low and finish high. 140 to 158 over 2 hours will get you a great amount of fermentables. Or just 146 for 60 even will do it. Once you go up, you can't go back down.

tannnick said:

Why does your mash schedule decrease in temp? It should start low and finish high. 140 to 158 over 2 hours will get you a great amount of fermentables. Or just 146 for 60 even will do it. Once you go up, you can't go back down.

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It wasn't by design, cooler wouldn't hold temp and there was no more room for hot liquad

Wrap her up in an electric blanket and crank it up It works.

Day 21, still at 1.010. Considering building a small box with my left over ply wood and my insurlation material, and putting a light bulb inside and closing her up. Is it too late to ramp up the heat for effectiveness?

Sanitize a plastic mash paddle (or similar device) and stir that yeast back up. Just don't oxygenate too much.

Beerculese,
If you feel 1.01 is still too high I'd still suggest adding some yeast energizer. I added it with a half cup of sugar which gave the yeast something easy to munch on and woke them up enough to "take their vitamins". Worked great on mine. Might be worth a shot if your target is much lower than 1.01.

Saison Yeast are notorious for slow finishing. You can find plenty of threads on this forum that back this up. Yeast Energizer and rousing definitely wouldn't hurt, if you went to this trouble I would also try and ramp up temps.

An easy solution might be to buy some champagne yeast $1/pack and see if that will finish it out, if you are in a hurry. 1.010 beer might be perfectly acceptable as well, I betcha it tastes good.

I am just tossing ideas out there, I don't have too much experience with saisons. I brewed one last year with WLP568, a blend of belgian ale and saison yeast, and I didn't have any trouble with it. I went with the blend because I knew saison yeast by itself could be troublesome.

3711 should finish fairly quickly at room temp, and while I've never had it finish as high as 1.010, that's certainly within the BJCP range for the style. Add some nutrient, but if it doesn't move within a week, I wouldn't worry.

While 1.010 might not seem that bad in general, remember the OG was only 1.045. This is not a big beer. I'd want a smallish saison to finish lower, too.

Well, I got creative and did some stuff I'll probably get scolded for.

I went ahead and split the 10g batch into two seperate carboys. I added some sanitized in simmering water table sugar (just a small handfull) to each carboy. In one, I added some Brett B, in the other just a little bit of enegizer. I puposely sucked up as much yeast as I could into each carboy because I'm not exactly looking for a "Secondary" so much as I wanted to split it up so I can add the Brett while there is still some fermentable sugars in the beer. The other non-brett carboy will just continue doing it's thing

I have no idea how this will turn out, or if it was a big mistake because I'm still learning, but worst case scenario I learned what not to do

I was intending on funktifying 1/2 the batch anyway so... here's to learning by experience

tannnick said:

Why does your mash schedule decrease in temp? It should start low and finish high. ... Once you go up, you can't go back down.

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Why cannot you decrease the mash temp? I thought that was the method to increase the fermentable sugars.
(Sorry if this hijacks the thread. I had never heard of that.)

GuldTuborg said:

While 1.010 might not seem that bad in general, remember the OG was only 1.045. This is not a big beer. I'd want a smallish saison to finish lower, too.

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True, true. The difference between an FG of 1.010 and 1.003 is the difference between 4.7% ABV and 5.6% ABV. That said, if it tastes good don't worry about it. 3711 isn't typically very finicky, so it's probably done.

Epimetheus said:

Why cannot you decrease the mash temp? I thought that was the method to increase the fermentable sugars.
(Sorry if this hijacks the thread. I had never heard of that.)

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First, you're right - lower mash temps make the beer more fermentable.

However, it's my understanding (not an expert) that as your temp goes up, it permanently deactivates the enzymes that would convert at lower temperatures, so as an example, if you start mashing at 154, let it rest for a while, then let your temp drop to 148, a lot of the enzymes that would otherwise be active at that temp will have been denatured.

While I don't think it made too much difference here (little residual heat loss over the course of an hour), with a different mash schedule it could make a HUGE difference.