French Saison Tasting

Just over a week ago I brewed this French Saison. The grist for this beer included about 40% sweet potato which is just a little artistic license based on saying farmhouse brewers of the time threw whatever they had into the mash. They meant wheat, spelt, and rye, but I'd bet more than one chucked their garden leftovers in there as well. Belgium grew sweet potatoes during the 1500s so Sweet Potato Saison is born.

Visual:

This beer is not clear, it has plenty of haze despite fining it with gelatin. It's on the border of golden and orange, and isn't particularly appealing to look at.

It leaves a nice lace on the glass while drinking.

 Aroma:

Fruity, slight banana. Slight pepper spice

Flavor:

Banana, light pepper spice. General fruitiness 

It does have some body but finishes dry

Overall:

Overall this beer is tasty. The flavors shift around, sometimes the fruitiness is more prominent, sometimes it's the spices, sometimes it's all banana. It's easy to drink a couple but gets tiring on the pallet after that. It's a wonderful beer that I will make again.

Brew Day: Red IPA

 Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

It's brew day. Today I'm brewing a Red IPA. It's a style I've never brewed before. I've brewed plenty of IPAs, probably in the neighborhood of 30-40, but never a Red IPA. I've only tasted a couple versions of the style. 21st Amendment's Toaster Pastry, and Sierra Nevada's Flipside. Of the two, Toaster Pastry caught my attention the most so I've designed my recipe to accomplish an end result more similar to that beer.

I know a lot of recipes center around caramel malt, I've gone a slightly different direction with 8% caramunich. A little more toasty/bready sweetness, less caramel/licorice/raisin from standard c40/60/80/120 crystal malts, although the caramunich has some raisin-y notes. Other than that there's a touch of midnight wheat (1.5%) for color and the rest is base malts. This is still an IPA so I want the finish to end dry. So we have 67% American Pale Ale and 20% Vienna malt for some honey and nut. We should get a nice malt backbone shows some sweetness without being sweet, or having a heavy mouthfeel.

The hops are a combination of simcoe and amarillo. The Simcoe I have is very catty, I'm using it for bittering and flavor. I laced it through the beer at 60,30,10 and 20 minute whirlpool. I did the same with the amarillo except for the 60 minute bittering addition. The amarillo has a very citrus-y aroma and usually comes out tasting like orange citrus in my opinion, can't wait to try this beer.

The brew day went very smoothly, I didn't forget any of the steps (like adding the sulfate, did that last time) and it was over by noon. 

While I was waiting for my mash I kegged and quick carbed the Saison I brewed last Saturday. It seems quick but driving the fermentation temp up to 77 had 3711 completely fermented in 4 days so I was able to cold crash and fine it by day 7, so I did. The beer is delicious and I'll have tasting notes on that for my next post.

Cheers and happy brewing!

RECIPE

French Saison - Fermentation

 

Saison F.G. 1.004

The French Saison brewed on 3/5/2022 has finished fermenting. It was fully fermented out in about 4 days. I used the Wyeast 3711 French Saison strain. I pitched at 70 degrees and cranked that up a couple degrees every 12 hours until we hit 77 degrees (the top end for that yeast strain). I wanted to encourage the ester and phenol production as much as possible and also to make sure this beer finished out nice and dry, which it did. It finished at the bottom end of the range for the style, that works for me.

Below is the tilt hydrometer chart for the fermentation. I checked the tilt before using in water and it read 1.000 and the correct temp but it seems to be about 3 points off in it's final reading. I found it to be 2 points off in the original reading as well, my hydrometer indicated 1.49 O.G. while the tilt read 1.047, as you can see.

You can see from the reading variances how turbulent the fermentation was. I did use a blow-off tube from the start, experience with this strain in the past indicated I should. 

The fermentation smelled of banana and bubble gum with some peppery hints. Tasting the hydrometer sample shows mostly spicy peppery notes, very, very nice. I'm excited to get this beer on tap. I plan to cold crash overnight then get some gelatin in there to help it clear up. I'm hoping to have it on tap by Sunday at the latest. 

Tasting notes to follow.

Saison - First Brew of 2022

Photo by Mark Neal from Pexels

Today is my first brew day of 2022. It's the mark of a renewed passion for brewing, and renewed commitment to blogging. I didn't blog for a few years, I lost my interest in the hobby of homebrewing along with the time to do it. Recently that interest has been sparked once again and I was looking back at all my old posts. While I realize I'm not the best or most interesting writer/blogger, I personally find value in having the history of the writing. It vividly brings back memories of what I was writing about and I remember things I may not have otherwise.

Today's blog will be the documentation of a brew day for a Farmhouse Saison. I've brewed this beer in the past for a end of tax season party at work. I supplied this Saison and a NEIPA which was my first attempt at that style back in 2018 or 2019. Both beers turned out well and both beers disappeared in 2 hours (both five gallon batches). There were about 30 people attending the party and the feedback was all positive. Today's brew is not earmarked for a party, but I want to recreate that beer using the same recipe and scaling it up to my current 11 gallon batch size. Hopefully it will be as good as I remember.

When I created this recipe I remember doing a fair amount of research into the style and what may have historically went into a Saison. I may have taken some liberties with adding vegetables into brew but it turned out well so I'm going to stick with it this time around as well. I start by baking the sweet potato until fully cooked, waiting for them to cool to mash temp, then adding them to the mash. 

The corn sugar is used to dry the beer out similar to the way you would use it in a double IPA. This seemed to work well last time so no changes there either. Saison must have a dry finish, the beer should be very well attenuated the corn sugar helps with that.

I'm adding a significant amount of sulfate to my mash water because it helps with that dry and crisp mouth feel, and Belgium water seems to be higher in sulfate than chloride. (https://byo.com/article/saving-saison/) I don't believe I did this last time I brewed it but experience gathered since then tells me this is a good idea.

The brew day went fairly well although I was rushing around most of the day trying to put equipment back together I had been cleaning all week, fixing my Tilt Hydrometer TiltPi setup, and baking 10lbs sweet potato for the mash. I missed my OG by a few points ending up at 1.049, not too bad, much better than the last time I brewed this beer.

I did have one costly mistake, my temp probe cable was wrapped through my mash tun handle, when I went to move the mash tun for cleaning the ripped the cable off the ends, pulled the Wort Hog controller end right out of the frame. I ordered a new temp probe and cable, coming to a $100 mistake, ouch!

If you're reading this post you can see the fermentation reports on the What's Brewing page in the menu of this blog. It's fermented very fast and was down 20 points in 12 hours, has slowed down since then but I've been ramping the temperature to encourage 3711 French Saison to through out those beautiful phenolics and esters.

I'll follow up this post with some tasting notes when the beer is ready.

End of brew day fallen soldiers

Started the ferment at 70 degrees, will ramp to 77

 

RECIPE

Getting that Itch Again

Well it's been years since I've posted anything to this blog. I've purchased a new home and been promoted at work a couple times, and a global pandemic, all of which have contributed to the hiatus. Those aren't the only reasons for the long absence, while I have been brewing, it hasn't been anywhere near as often, or with as much passion. but...

 I think the bug is back. I've been thinking, reading, and watching homebrew videos again lately whenever possible. I missed the Kveik takeover and I'm interested in experimenting and learning about this new-old yeast, Voss and Lutra specifically sound intriguing for IPAs and Clean-Lager like beers respectively.

The photo above was taken before dismantling the last of my (and my clubs) barrel program. I have plans to turn the room into a man-cave cigar lounge. I think my barreling days are over, if I want a wood/whiskey flavoring to my beer,  I'll soak some oak staves in bourbon and drop those into my fermenters.

Back to the subject of this post, the itch is back. I've ordered ingredients for two beers, a French Saison that I've made in the past and has turned out superbly, and a Red IPA that I've never made before. I have memories of 21st Amendment's Toaster Pastry IPA and I want to create a similar beer. Both are 10 gallon batches and I'm looking forward to the process again. 

I've spent the last two evenings tearing apart my brewing equipment, soaking fittings, changing hoses, flushing and soaking my counterflow chiller, and making sure I'm ready to brew this weekend. Friday night I'll do one last boiling flush of the system with all the new hoses and fittings assembled to do a final cleaning, and make sure nothing leaks and everything works correctly.