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.

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

Saison Comparison - Kegging

I blogged about the brew day for this comparison last week here. Both beers fermented in my brew room (in the barn) at 85F for 3 days and were at the same FG of 1.002 at the end of day 3. On day 4 I place both beers in my fermentation chamber and crashed them at 30F then added gelatin the next day. On day 6 I decided to have a taste and keg the beers.

Left: Belle Saiso, Right: WLP568

The beers are nearly identical in color but differ in taste. The Belle Saison's esters and phenolics are muted and it has a slight fusel alcohol taste at the end. The White Labs WLP568 fermented side by side with the Belle and doesn't have any of those characteristics. The esters and phenols are bright and mingle well with the orange peel and coriander flavors. 

Since I'm not thrilled with the Belle Saison, and don't want to serve it to people the way it is I've decided to keg 568 for drinking now and naturally carbonate the Belle in the keg with Brett Brux as I originally intended for one of these strains. I don't know if that will improve the beer but I won't know if I don't try.

I'll post tasting notes on both beers as they become ready to drink.

Saison Comparison - Brew Day

I had some White Labs Saison yeast that was about to expire and another package I picked up at HomebrewCon 2016 in Baltimore from Lallemand's vendor table. Originally I was going to make one batch with the Whitelabs 568 and do a mild kettle sour with the Lallemand Belle Saison then add some Brett Brux in the secondary to get some funk but brew day came I realized I had Lacto and no Brett so I decided to forego the sour/funky Saison and do a comparison between these two yeasts I had on hand using the same base beer.

This is just a log of the brew day and won't be very interesting, I'll posting tasting when the beers are ready.

Stats

OG 1.048
IBU 27
Fermentation Temp 85F Ambient

Grain Bill

50% 2-Row

35% White Wheat

5% Acid Malt

5% Honey Malt

5% Victory

Hops

12 IBU Amarillo @ 60

15 IBU Amarillo @ 10

Yeast

White Labs 568 Belgian Saison

Lellemand Belle Saison Dry Yeast

Misc

Both ingredients added after cooling to 180 to help avoid boiling off flavors but keep pasteurization.

8oz bitter orange peel.

1.25oz crushed corriander seed

There are no crystal or dark malts in the recipe so the acid malt is included to lower mash pH, ended up at 5.4

Brew Dog

Pre-measured hops, orange peel and coriander