Saison Yeast as a "house" strain...

[Ceejay]

I'm thinking of producing a few months worth of beers, purely using the Whitelabs Saison 2 strain. The saisons I've had have been some of the nicest beers I've tried and I thought at points that it might be an idea to use a Saison yeast as a kind of "house" strain to produce all kinds of beers. I have a assumptions I've made to come up with that theory though. What do you all think?

Say I was doing and "English Premium Bitter" with this yeast, I could manage attenuation down to say 70 to 75% by mashing really warm, say close to 70C. At the same time, I'd be able to ferment at a low temp, say 20C all the way through to manage the phenols and esters. This would produce an interesting, great, but slightly different English Bitter than we're used to but it would actually be really good : Would it be as good as I think it might be? Or would it be totally "wrong"?

Would a saison yeast still work on say a Southern English Brown wort, and would it be advisable to do the same as above?

 

[TheMumbler]

I don't think that Saison yeast would be good as an all rounder from my experience of making one and drinking a few :). You might get away with it using lower temps for bitters I guess, I'd certainly be interested to see what a beer like that tastes like. Why not give it a go and see what happens?

Saison yeast really isn't going to work for anything clean (lagers, american styles) and as you say they do tend to go very dry which will be an issue for some beers. I don't know what a saison yeast will eat up in terms of the slightly longer chain sugars which would effect how much higher mash temps would help you keep body.

That is about as much igorance as I have to share on the subject

 

[TheMumbler]

Have you tried Wildeman by Flying Dog btw?

 

[Ceejay]

No, but I definitely will. I love a good Belgian IPA, and I've definitely got a thing for Saison at the moment. I see what you are saying about using it as a house strain. OK might try a line of brews with it though and see what happens. There's a brewery in America called Upright Brewing that uses it as a house strain.