On another thread we were discussing stressed yeast which lead me to another question. Some of my favorite saison Ive made was before I understood pitch rate and probably under pitched my yeast by accident. Then I started pitching using a calculator. Now I’ve heard you should under pitch. Maybe that will help my Belgians and saison, they have been coming out to clean. How much of an under pitch do you all recommend
I all ways over pitch my belgians. I been doing some experiments with my for awhile now about esters and head space and fermenter designs. So far belgians tend to have more esters when less head space is available also the more shallow the fermenter the more esters seem to be produced. Also temp has a great deal of creating esters But I have not tried the under pitch. A lot of Belgian yeast are finicky and either take right off or stall out when under pitched and hard to restart
I’m a big fan of underpitching and over-oxygenating with saison yeast. You don’t want to underpitch to the point of possibly stalling the fermentation, but something like half the number of cells you would normally pitch is a good starting point. I usually do 40-60 seconds of pure O2, but for a saison bump it up to 100-120 seconds. Not so much for the purpose of stressing the yeast, but to set up a robust growth phase, which will really increase water formation. It’s a farmhouse style, nothing wrong with playing loose with the rules!
