Fast Ferment Test and French Saison (3711) yeast?

[CharlosCarlies]

I wanted to wait until we had a few more data points, but as our saisons have grown in popularity I had to see if there is an obvious answer we're overlooking because this has been driving me nuts! We've been doing a fast ferment on just about every brew (especially new beers) and almost all of them hit within 0.1P of the actual FG in the batch of beer; however, every single one we've done w/ 3711 has finished almost a full point higher no matter what we do.

From our experience w/ 3711, we're very used to its super-attenuating tendencies so it isn't just a time thing as we've let them run up to 2 weeks + with no change. To make things stranger, the sample I took today was at 1.3P while the actual beer was < 1P already (and still going)! Not sure if there's any significance, but almost every single test has shown 1.3P +/- 0.1P with the finished beer ending anywhere from 0.0 up to 0.6.

Any ideas at all? As far as technique, we've basically just been pulling samples ~24 hours in and letting them ride on the stir plate in our ~75F lab. It's been suggested we try adding more yeast, but every other strain has finished almost dead on so what makes 3711 so different? (once again)

[Yeast]

I wanted to wait until we had a few more data points, but as our saisons have grown in popularity I had to see if there is an obvious answer we're overlooking because this has been driving me nuts! We've been doing a fast ferment on just about every brew (especially new beers) and almost all of them hit within 0.1P of the actual FG in the batch of beer; however, every single one we've done w/ 3711 has finished almost a full point higher no matter what we do.

From our experience w/ 3711, we're very used to its super-attenuating tendencies so it isn't just a time thing as we've let them run up to 2 weeks + with no change. To make things stranger, the sample I took today was at 1.3P while the actual beer was < 1P already (and still going)! Not sure if there's any significance, but almost every single test has shown 1.3P +/- 0.1P with the finished beer ending anywhere from 0.0 up to 0.6.

Any ideas at all? As far as technique, we've basically just been pulling samples ~24 hours in and letting them ride on the stir plate in our ~75F lab. It's been suggested we try adding more yeast, but every other strain has finished almost dead on so what makes 3711 so different? (once again)

3711 is super flocculant, it can sludge up a stir bar during force fermentations, you should rouse your primaries when it slows down to get it back up into suspension

[CharlosCarlies]

3711 is super flocculant

Not sure we're talking about the same yeast! 3711 is very non-flocculant in our experience.

[Yeast]

Not sure we're talking about the same yeast! 3711 is very non-flocculant in our experience.

First generation?
The only times I have problems with 3711 is first gen it sticks to the tank walls on crashing too but its very flocculant in my experience. We've been propagating it from master slants since we don't use it much more than once a month

[mmussen]

A thought about your fast ferment tests. Are you using 3711 for the fast ferment test as well? In my experience with that yeast it always finishes super low and seems to chew through more sugars then just about any other yeast I've ever used. Its also always seemed to take a couple extra days to finish fermentation than most of my other yeasts. Maybe trying to let your fast ferment of 3711 sit an extra 12 hours after the first check and see if the gravity changes at all?

[CharlosCarlies]

First generation?
The only times I have problems with 3711 is first gen it sticks to the tank walls on crashing too but its very flocculant in my experience. We've been propagating it from master slants since we don't use it much more than once a month

Yep it's first gen, but that's only because we've never been able to pull even close to enough to re-pitch. To be fair, we're also dry-hopping so we're only crashing to ~55F, but that's always been more than enough of a temp drop for every other strain in the brewery. Putting it in perspective, for a 40 BBL batch we usually pull ~80 kg of thick slurry 24 hrs after crashing, while w/ 3711 we're lucky to get 30-40 kg pulling slower than normal even 2-3 days after crashing. Maybe it's something we're doing though which is why I was curious!

A thought about your fast ferment tests. Are you using 3711 for the fast ferment test as well? In my experience with that yeast it always finishes super low and seems to chew through more sugars then just about any other yeast I've ever used. Its also always seemed to take a couple extra days to finish fermentation than most of my other yeasts. Maybe trying to let your fast ferment of 3711 sit an extra 12 hours after the first check and see if the gravity changes at all?

Yes, we are using the 3711 but we aren't pitching any additional yeast. We're basically just throwing it on the stir plate once we're close to peak cell counts, so adding more yeast is probably a good idea; however, we've even let the fast ferment run 7+ days and the actual beer was lower than the sample which makes no sense at all to me!

As far as chewing through every ounce of sugar in its path, we're used to that too (seeing 95-100% AA generally), but it's often taking us an additional week or two even to actually completely finish up. We usually hit ~1P after 5-6 days, then gravity will drop .1 or so every couple of days (some finishing as low as 0P). If we treated it like every other strain in the brewery, we would have definitely cut it short a few times after seeing 2-3 days at the same gravity reading!

[Yeast]

3711

we had the same problem with first generation 3711. we would buy 60bbl pitch for wort at gravity 14P from wyeast but when I did cell counts on it they were really giving us something like a 30bbl pitch for wort at 14 plato. which wasn't the end of the world since we would fill the fermentor with 2x30bbl over 2 shifts. when we harvested after fementation crashing to 38F we would get a terrible harvest compared to all other yeasts.

since we started propegation of 3711 from slanted culture our first generation fermentation of our saison finished days quicker and the harvest was normal rather than like you experienced. Every once and a while we brew the saison again soon enough to repitch from the first generation one and fermentation goes like mad. I've only had terrible experience buying pitches from wyeast with 3711 it takes forever to attenuate down and the harvest is garbage.