"Farmhouse" Saison

I stole this wonderful picture of a saison from some other guy's blog.

Uh...Thanks man.

Me and Ray did this one with Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse, which is the Blaugies strain, I'm pretty sure. The first batch of saison we brewed together went the the Brew & Chew homebrew and food pairing comp at the Diamond, and it did really well. Not to be modest, but it was the best beer there. The second batch of saison, or "grisette" as we are calling it, is going to Brewtopia. But this batch is just for us, minus maybe a few for competitions and trades. We're trying to get the alcohol up to 7+% for a more "brewer's reserve" feel.

The only thing I didn't really like in the first saison was a little too much sour twang from the sauer malt. We just used a little lactic acid addition in this beer to adjust the mash pH and left the sauer malt out.

Recipe is for 12 gallons, 10.5 in the fermentors.

O.G. before dilution with starter 1.064 IBU's 33

O.G. after dilution with starter 1.061 IBU's 30

F.G. 1.006 ABV 7.2%

19 lb. Durst pilsner malt

2 lb. wheat malt

.5 lb. aromatic malt

2 lb. table sugar

26 gr. Millenium pellets 14.9% 60 min

28 gr. Kent Goldings pellets 5.5% 15 min

28 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 0 min

28 gr. Saphir pellets 4% 0 min

7.5 gallons water + 1 ml lactic acid. Mash at 146 for 90 minutes.

Sparge with 8.5 gallons at 175

Collect 13 gallons, added.5 gallons top-up water and the sugar. Pre-boil gravity was 1.058

Boiled 90 minutes, additions as noted.

Whirlfloc at 15 min, 1 tsp Wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled to 68, racked to carboys and aerated by shaking.

Pitched a huge starter: 1 gallon made on a stirplate the day before, threw the whole thing in.

Should effectively reduce the O.G. to 1.061 and IBU's to 30.

Currently fermenting at 72, topped out at around 75.

Racked to keg on 11/7/08, The sample was tasty with a nice tangerine note and some earthyness, but the overall aroma was a little underwhelming IMO.

Here is the finished beer. Need to work on my photography skills!

12/2/08 Tasting:

Aroma: Spicy, some light vanilla malt combining with esters of banana, pear, and apple. Very clean and spicy.

Appearance: Slightly hazy light gold, good head, tight bubbles.

Flavor: Round initial malt with big esters of banana/pear/apple, followed by a light zing of acidity and a dry, spicy finish. Medium bitterness, medium noble hop flavor in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Light, expands in mouth from high carbonation. Dry spicy finish with a touch of warming alcohol.

Overall: Subtle, well crafted and clean, missing that complex fruityness (too much banana), and wild or earthy "rustic" flavor you might expect. Very Drinkable!

New Toy: Stirplate

OK, so this is one of the things I've been wanting to get for a while, in the continuing effort to improve my brewing. I think the Erlenmyer flask is 10 times more important than the stirplate though. The stirplate just gets you more yeast growth per volume. But the flask lets you do simple, quick and sterile starters.

I bought the flask from Northern Brewer for about $30 I think. Adam Winkel generously donated his stirplate to me due to equipment downsizing. He said it wasn't too powerful, and it has a hard time stirring much more than water.

The first thing I did was take off the top plate and adjust some spacers, so now the tray sits closer to the magnet and hopefully gets more pull. It seems to be working fine, but only experience will tell!

Rye Stout 2008

I think I had Bell's Rye Stout about 5-6 years ago, around the time when I first started homebrewing. It was a very nice, characterful beer. Shortly after, when I was working at a homebrew store for a little while, I did my first Imperial Stout. I can't remember what it was exactly, some recipe out of Clonebrews.

Of course, being a new homebrewer, I couldn't leave that recipe alone. I added a pound and a half of flaked rye, and some honey. 8 months later when it stopped tasting like rocket fuel, it actually developed into a really fantastic beer.

Point being, this is not a clone of Bell's Rye Stout. I've brewed a lot of incarnations of this, and the best time was last time, at an export stout strength. It has a very creamy mouthfeel, notes of chocolate, coffee, and even cherry. It also went really well next to a shot of bourbon. This time will be a little different too, but I don't know how yet. Last time I used a british yeast. This time I am going for a little more attenuation with an American ale yeast, and I threw in slightly bigger hop additions at the end. Eventually I'll bottle this for Christmas presents for friends.

This was not my smoothest brewday. I came up a little short on my kettle volume, then boiled off a little too much, and then thinned the beer down with a quart of water. Also, I had a huge flask of Wyeast 1056 ready for this and the next day's group brewday. I didn't have a good way of measuring the yeast so I just guestimated, and judging from the lag time, I was a little low on my yeast pitch. But not a lot low. It should be fine.

Recipe is for 5.8 gallons post-boil, 5 in the fermenter.

O.G. 1.067 F.G. 1.020 ABV 6.3% IBU's 75

10 lb. Glen Eagle Marris Otter malt

2 lb. Rye malt

1 lb. Roasted Barley

.5 lb. rice hulls

.5 lb. crystal rye (no lovibond stated, maybe 40L)

6 oz. chocolate rye

6 oz. crystal 120

2 oz. chocolate malt (I would have just used a half pound chocolate rye, but I was short)

28 gr. Millenium pellets 16% 60 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5 % 15 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5% 0 min

Mash in 4 gal to 150, rest 75 min.

Raise over high heat to 165 over 15 min.

Sparge with 5 gal at 178

Collect 6.3 gallons at 1.062 = 76% efficiency. A little short, I should have used an additional qt. of mash water.

Boil 60 min, hop additions as noted.

Whirlfloc at 15 min,

1/2 tsp. Wyesat nutrient at 10 min.

Chilled to 76 and racked to a carboy.

Aerated by shaking for 8 minutes (after reading recently that aerating by hand provides better saturation than an aquarium pump).

Chilled further to 68 degrees and pitched a slurry of Wyeast 1056.

Fermenting at 66-68 degrees. Lag time was about 12 hours till any real krausen.

Racked to a keg on 10/20/08. F.G. 1.020. Tastes pretty good. I was looking for a little more attenuation, like 1.017-18, but I think it suffered a bit from the low yeast pitch. I am not going to mess with it though.

I tasted this beer around 11/4/08, and it is nice but it is really so thick, I couldn't really drink much. It has an inky flavor, although it is really good. So here is what I did today:

11/10/08 Pulled the keg out to warm up, rehydrated 1 package of Munton's dried yeast, and pitched it into the keg with a blow off hose attached. Hoping to drop a few points and also, as a learning experience, I'll have tried the beer at 1.020 F.G. and a lower F.G.

Group Brewday: 2 new beers

Some pics from the NYCHG Group Brewday at Ray's Place... both beers were served at Brewtopia on Halloween weekend. They both rocked. And also the recipes:

Grisette (wheat saison)

Imperial Porter

Chris: the Human Sparge-arm

Completing the runoff

The weather was perfect...

Fritz shows us youngsters how it's done...

Sean and Dave mashing in the grisette

Fritz generously spearheaded the movement to pick many bits of roasted grain out of our wheat...I had a whole sack that came from the maltster with about 2% roasted barley corns.

IPA #2 2008

I'm brewing this right now, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. It's going to be my entry for the Club-Only IPA competition coming up. Now, Fritz Fernow, another NYC Homebrewers Guild member, brews some great IPA's. He typically medals with them in the New York homebrew circuit. He's gotten at least one Best of Show, and a couple of brewer's choice awards too. So Fritz, this one's for you, and if I beat you as the NYCHG's club pick, then I know I made a great beer.

This beer is probably a little higher in OG and IBU's than I like my IPA's. If it attenuates down to 1.013, then you're looking at 7% ABV, and I really like them to be more sessionable than that. But it's for competition, and sometimes that little extra umph will really get you somewhere. However, the beer has to be well-brewed first and foremost.

Recipe is for 6 gallons post-boil, all grain with a little DME to compensate for a lower efficiency than planned. Boil-off was about 11% in one hour.

O.G. 1.066 F.G. 1.013 IBU's 72

10.5 lb. American 2-row malt

1.75 lb. Golden Promise

.75 lb. British crystal 30 - 37

1 lb. light DME

4 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5% FWH

24 gr. Millenium pellets 16.3% 60 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5% 10 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5% 5 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets 9.5% 0 min

28 gr. Cascade plugs 6% dry-hop

Mash: 4 gallons H2O + 1 tsp. gypsum, mash in to 150.

Rest 70 min, then heat to 170 over 20 min

Sparge with 5 gallons at 170, recirc 2 qts.

Collect 6.66 gallons at 1.053 = 75% efficiency

Added 1 lb. DME and FWH, brought to a boil

Boil 60 min, additions as noted.

Whirlfloc at 15 min, 1 tsp. Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.

Chilled to 78, whirpooled, and collected 5.25 gallons. Aerated with aquarium pump and stone for 40 minutes, in the kegerator, and managed to get it down to 68 degrees in that time.

Pitched yeast-only of a .75 gallon starter of Wyeast 1056.
Fermented at 68 for 2 weeks, letting warm to 70 at the end.
Racked to a keg on 9/12, crash cooled.
Added 1 oz. Cascade plugs in a SS tea ball to the keg.

Final Tasting results 10/18/08:

• A little too much alcohol presence(I think due to lack of aeration from using that aquarium pump), I will switch to regular shaking in the future until I get an oxygen setup.
  
• Good malt bill and color, although I might knock down the O.G. to 1.063-1.064. I don't need all that alcohol.
• Hop bitterness was too high, and there was a harshness about it. I will probably knock it down by 5-7 IBU's, by deleting at least one late centennial addition. I think the harshness, which was described as "aspirin" by a beer judge, may have been from too much of this hop. It also may have been due to the "stainless steel" tea ball I used for dry hopping, which ended up not actually being all SS. Thanks, Northern Brewer...
  
• Hop aroma was not exactly jumping out of the glass. For overall hop schedule I would decrease the late kettle hops by 1-2 oz and increase dry hopping to 1.5-2 oz, added loose to a secondary. I also might mix the finish hop a bit, going with some Amarillo or Simcoe.
  

10 gallons of Flanders Red

Ray and I brewed this up about a 6 weeks ago, on the 5th of July. It was a pretty rainy weekend, but we managed to get a solid outdoor brew in between some showers. I'm so stoked for this beer! I love Flanders beers, be they gold, red, brown, whatever! Actually I just tried the awesome Abbaye de St. Bon Chien, a wonderful Swiss beer that is barrel aged and very Flanders-like in its sour profile, but it ranges in ABV from around 11-15%, depending on the vintage. Ours is just a straight-up Flanders red, closely based on Jamil's recipe, but we pitched straight Roselaire blend, none of that pitching a neutral ale yeast first. If it's too sour, we can alway blend back, but I kind of doubt that will happen.

One great thing about a well brewed Flanders red, it's a real panty-dropper! Keep that in mind, fellas.

So this is the first time Ray and I brewed together on his outdoor system. Here are some pics:

RAY'S GOT HIS GAME FACE ON

TESTING THE WATERS

Here is the recipe: for 12 gallons, post boil, all-grain

O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.009 ABV 6.1% IBU's 16

12.5 lb. pilsner malt

5 lb. munich malt

11 oz. special B

5 oz. crystal 120

1 lb. caramunich 60L

1 lb. aromatic malt

13 gr. EKG pellets 6% 60 min

25 gr. Hallertauer pellets 4.5% 60 min

Mash: 7.5 gallons water, 152 degrees 90 min

Sparge: 9 gallons 170 degrees

Collect 13.5 gallons @ 1.050 = 76% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, 1 tab whirlfloc at 15 min, 1 tsp. wyeast nutrient at 10 min. Boil-off rate was about 7% per hour, leaving us with 12 gallons of beer.

MASHING IN

PROMASH: IT DOESN'T WORK IN THE RAIN

Chilled and whirlpooled, racked to carboys and aerated by shaking. We only managed to cool the wort to 78 degrees, something we are working on improving for future batches.

Collected 10.5 gallons between 2 carboys and pitched the entire 1 gallon of starter wort, which I had sort of made as a malty brown starter so it could go right in the beer without diluting any of it's yummyness. We used the Wyeast seasonal Roselaire blend.

Fermented at 69-70 degrees for 4 weeks, racked to secondary, and it's hanging out at 75 degrees in Ray's basement.

This spent about a year in Ray's basement and I added 1 oz. french oak cubes to my half for the last month. Then I had to pack it in a keg to move it out to Portland.

On 1/14/10, it's still tasting kind of blah. I've had it sitting out a room temp, and today I added the sour blend that Al sent me for perking this up, plus about a tablespoon of thick yeast slurry from the funky pale ale I did recently, plus about 26 oz. of the Belgian Dark Strong for a little more complexity and residual sugars for the bugs to chomp on.

8/1/10 Transfered and added:

7 lb. Montmorency sour cherries, pitted

2 lb. dark sweet cherries with pits

1/2 oz. french oak chips, not sanitized or anything

Started fermenting again at 72 degrees.

10/25/10 Racked to keg, 1.009

Sean and Ray's "session" saison

Wow, it's been a long time since I've added anything to this blog, but yep, I've been brewing. I'll try and go back and add the recipes for the last couple of beers I've done: a flanders red (also with Ray) and an imperial wit.

Ray and I did this brew yesteday on his 10 gallon outdoor setup. It was our second beer on the system and things went a lot smoother. Even with a 95 minute mash and a 90 minute boil, it was under 6 hours from start to finish.

We were going to brew this beer as our entry to the Diamond Bar's homebrew and food pairing competition on Septmber 28th, but now it looks like Ray is going to be out of town that weekend, so maybe I will just do it on my own, with this beer or something else.

Anyway, here is the recipe for a standard gravity saison, should be around 5.5 - 6% ABV. We used the Wyeast 3711 French saison yeast, which is supposedly the Brasserie Theriez yeast. It should attenuate more quickly than the standard Dupont yeast, but so far it doesn't seem to be as complex and enticing of a flavor & aroma. Also, we get a pretty killer price on American hops, so we decided to try Glacier (an American noble-hybrid) for the bittering addition.

Recipe is for 12 gallons post-boil, about 11 in the fermenter, plus almost a full 1-gallon starter was added. Including the starter, the actual O.G. is probably a point lower, and the IBU's might be 3 lower than calculated here.

O.G. 1.052 F.G. 1.006 ABV 6.1% IBU's 29

19.75 lb. Durst pilsner malt

.5 lb. aromatic malt

.75 lb. German sauer malt

58 gr. Glacier pellets 6.1% 60 min

28 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 1 min

28 gr. East Kent Goldings 0 min

Mash: 7.5 gallons water to 157, mashed in to only 140. We were way low for what we wanted, so we added another half-gallon water to bring the temp up to 147. Altogether it had 15 min at 140 and 80 min at 147.

Sparged with 10 gallons at 170 degrees, collected 13.5 gallons at 1.049. I think this reading may have been slightly off though...might have been more like 1.047.

Boil: 90 min. Hop additions as noted. 1 tab whirlfloc, 1 tsp. wyeast nutrient at 10 min.

Chilled to 71, collected 11 gallons and pitched a 1 gallon starter (1.042 O.G.) of Wyeast 3711.

Fermented in the mid 70's, probably hit 78 at high krausen.

Racked to kegs on 9/7/08.

Final Tasting:
This beer turned out really great. It was one of my best beers in a while. I wouldn't change much, maybe reduce the Sauer malt by half. Didn't really seem necessary for the flavor. It might also be nice to up the finishing hop additions by 25-50%.

I bottled this beer for competition with my new beer gun, but it only got a middling score (low 30's). I didn't do such a great job with my first time on the beer gun and lost most of the carbonation, and that's a pretty big fault in a saison. It really changes the judges' perception of the beer. When I was trying it off the keg, I was thinking it was a 39-40 point beer.