Homebrew #4: Saison

It is becoming a trend for me as craft beer drinker to get caught up in phases where I search out all there is to offer for particular styles of beers. At first it was reds and browns, then stouts and IPAs, and now I am on a Belgian beer bender. "Belgian" is not so much a style of beer in itself, but about the region where the beer comes from ("No way! Belgians come from Belgium?!"), the people who make it, and most importantly the yeast strains used. I won't go to deep in to Belgians because it would make this post way too long, but something soon to come will discuss all that good stuff...

Right now, my holy grail is a good Saison (here are some of my favorites: Tank 7, Tropic King, Hennepin). Traditionally, Saisons were brewed in farmhouses in a French speaking part of Belgium, and for very practical reasons. First and foremost, Saisons were brewed to refresh farmers in the hot months of Spring going into Summer. Secondly, brewing beer was a way for farmers to continue to work (and make money) during the off season of the farm. Last, the spent grains from the brewing process make for great animal feed. Today, I would argue that Saisons are brewed simply because of the way they taste. Saisons have become a very popular beer in the American craft beer world, and thus has developed into a style that is very hard to generally categorize. Typically Saisons are light colored, in the 6-7% ABV range, and have spicy and fruity qualities. That being said, Saisons can be dark, over 10% ABV, and be extremely hoppy, so it is almost pointless to try and reduce the style of Saison to a simple description anymore.

The Saison recipe I put together was inspired by a recipe I found on the HomebrewTalk forums. I took the ingredients and some of the procedures and reworked them in the BeerSmith software in order to get a recipe that will produce quality beer with the equipment set up I have. This beer involves some spices (pink peppercorns, corriander seeds) and fruits (orange peel zest) which should add nicely to the flavor profile. So here is what the recipe looks like:

Brew day: 12/27/11

Grains:
-6 lb 4 oz - Belgian Pilsner Malt
-3 lb 12 oz - Maris Otter, Pale Malt
-2 lb 8 oz - White Wheat Malt
-5 oz - Aromatic Malt
-5 oz Biscuit Malt


Mash Schedule:

-Mash Grains with 4.5 gal 161 degree F water at 147 degree F for 75 minutes.
-Sparge ~1 gal of 175 degree F water for 10 min
-Sparge ~1.5 gal of 175 degree F water for 10 min
-Sparge ~1.5 gal of 175 degree water for 10 min

Pre Boil Volume: ~8 gal

Pre Boil Gravity: 1.051 (right on target)

Boil Schedule (90 minutes):

-1/2 oz - Magnum Hops (flake)             @ 90 min
-1 lb - Amber Candi Sugar                    @ 60 min
-1 oz Hallertauer Hops                         @ 10 min
- Super Moss                                      @ 10 min
-1 oz - Corriander Seed (crushed)         @ 5 min
-1 oz - Orange Peel, Sweet                  @ 5 min
-1 oz - Hallertauer Hops                       @ 0 min
-1 oz - Pink Pepper Corns                    @ 0 min

I put the Magnum hops in a hop bag during the boil since they were in flake form. I didn't want to have too much sediment in primary and I heard flake hops can get messy, so I decided to try the hop bag. I ended up doing all the hop and other spices additions into the same hop as the Magnum hops so as to keep the wart free of sediment. The pink peppercorns were put into its own hop bag because I decided to leave them in the carboy during primary to give it a really strong peppery flavor.


Post Boil Volume: 4.1 gal
Post Boil Gravity: 1.088 (WAY to high*)

Once the boil was over, I cooled the wort down to 65 degree F with my wort chiller and some snow. I dumped the wort vigorously into the fermentation bucket in order to aerate it a bit, and then stirred it rapidly to oxygenate it some more. I then added 1 packet of Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast. Because my gravity is so high, some would say I need more yeast to get full fermentation, but I am going to wait it out and see what happens. I can always add yeast later...

*Unfortunately the program I used to help make this recipe (BeerSmith) crashed and didn't save the recipe I used for this batch, so I don't have specific numbers for things like target gravity. What I do know is that 1.088 was extremely high. The gravity was supposed to be in the realm of 1.071, so something was definitely off. After a some panicking and a little research it seems that two major things happened. First, I didn't mash enough water to have 5 gallons of wort after a 90 minute boil (I need to adjust my boil off rate). Second, I formulated my recipe assuming I would only get about 65% efficiency from the grains. The percentage of efficiency is how much sugar you extracted from the grains during mashing. In general, you have lower efficiency when you first start all grain because you need to get used to your equipment and get good at hitting and maintaining mash temperatures for long periods of times. Apparently I had good luck, and had around 75-80% efficiency. Lesson Learned: It will take a few batches to get used to equipment in order to create perfect recipes with precise amounts of ingredients. Practice makes perfect....

The beer started fermenting at 65 degrees F and has since naturally risen to ~72 degrees F (1/3). In the next week it will hopefully get up to ~78 degrees F and I will have to somehow boost and maintain the fermentation at 80 for a few days before letting it come back down and the bottling it. Fermentation temperature is crucial in the outcome of Saisons. Although a lot of flavor is being derived from the malts, hops, and adjuncts I boiled in, most of it is actually being produced by the yeast, which reacts in different ways depending on temperature.

I am trying to keep my expectations low since this is my first all grain batch, but at the same time I hope this is as good as it smells...