Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I had ordered this yeast while it was available during the summer months from Wyeast as part of their VSS series.  Finally around the end of November I got around to making a saison recipe based on the Autumn Saison recipe in the Zymurgy saison issue.  I decided to use Wyeast 3726 because A) I love the beers that I've had from the source brewery Brasserie Blaugies, and B) it is supposed to be one of the more phenolic strain for saisons (according to Zymurgy), and I've been having trouble getting clove, spice, or that characteristic Belgian phenolic flavor to shine through. Usually the esters are way too strong and mess up the balance.  I have the book Brew Like a Monk, and it really clued me into what I was doing wrong.  I was pitching the yeast way too warm and not keeping track of the temperature during fermentation. I can't begin to tell you how much this effects the flavor development with the various Belgian strains of yeast.  These things are incredibly sensitive to temperature at different times of the fermentation process.  I was making starters, but this didn't keep a ridiculous amount of esters from forming.  I bought some cheap little temperature strips that stick onto my glass carboys.  What a difference it made.  I'll post the recipe and temperature recordings in this thread later, as I don't have them on-hand right now.  But wow, this beer is full of clove and spice. I really dig this yeast and I can't wait to get some opinions from the group. 

Spidey monitoring temperatures! Have pigs learned to fly? Looking forward to trying some of the brew...

Fermentation temperature is absolutely key to making great beer.  Spidey already makes great beer, so I am excited to see about how much better it gets when he tracks this key process variable.

I don't know anything about wyeast, but I do know about whitelabs.  I also agree about the importance of temperature, having messed with about three Belgian strains.

Yeast is really sensitive to temps, but it only matters in some cases (so long as you aren't looking for something specific, or trying to avoid something unpleasant).

Whitelabs posts the 3 most prominent flavors for a tight range of temperatures on their whitepapers for the strains they sell.

e.g.

www.whitelabs.com/beer/belgianchart.pdf

They really hide the spec sheets.  I might have some somewhere I've found before which are specific to 1 strain, probably either Saison (Farmhouse) or Belgian or Abbey, since I've used those.

I also know from personal experience that one can ferment decent brew (sake in my specific experience) with yeast as 'wrong' as fleishmans as long as the temp is low and well controlled.