any saison recipes?

This one was OK:
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/community/blog/show?title=recipe-of-the-week-saison-ete

I used all ingredients but the acidulated malt, and it turned out OK.

 

90% Pils
5% carapils
5% acidulated
1.040 OG, 1.005 FG

German Magnum to 30 IBUs
A few ounces of Styrian Goldings at 15, 5 and flameout.

Ferment at 75, let it warm up a bit more for the first week then give a nice month long secondary. The Brett version should get a solid 3-4 months.

This is something I've done a half dozen times in he last year.
Enjoy!

 

Here is my Goose Island Sofie Clone I brewed. After only 50 days it is down to 1.010 and has an amazing citrus and barnyard nose and flavor. I am very happy with it so far. I am tempted to keg and drink it up asap but, I am going to let it sit another two months.

Dingmans Pils- 4lbs
Flaked Wheat -2lbs
White Wheat-1lbs
Light Pils DME -3 Pounds
Mash at 156

Pitched Wyeast Belgian Saison and Wyeast Brett B + Sofie Dregs at 78 degrees. I am going to keep it in the 80 for a week with a heating pad.

I hit my intended O.G 1.056 and hop this attenuates down to 1.002 or so.

Primary 30 days.

Secondary for 90-120 with 75 oz White wine soaked French medium toast Oak chips and 1 oz bitter orange peel.

 

My standard house saison recipe is

(for 5.5 post boil with 75% efficiency, 90 minute boil, mash at 147 for 60-75 minutes , whenever you have complete conversion)

8lbs Dingemans Pilsner Malt (this is by far my favorite Belgian Pilsner Malt)
3lbs Dingemans Wheat Malt
1.5 lbs Munich (adds a nice hint of breadiness that sets my saison apart from other examples)
1lb of corn sugar in the boil

1oz 8% Pearle at 75
.5oz 5.4% Styrian Goldings at 15
Whirfloc at 15
.5oz Styrian Goldings at flameout

1500 ml stir plate starter of 3711.

Ferment at 76-80 degrees (I've never pushed it above 80 with this strain)

2 weeks in primary followed by another 2 weeks in cold conditioning (55 degrees or so) leave you with a brilliantly clear beer. Carb heavily (5.5 oz of corn sugar for a 5 gallon batch is about right, or whatever the corresponding CO2 volumes would be for kegging) and enjoy.

If I were doing a variation with Brett B (the saison brett dreggs) I'd pitch them into the bretted half at the same time as the yeast starter to let the brett get a chance to throw off some yeast character before the saison yeast eats everything in sight.

Cheers!

 

.75 oz?

 

What do you want the beer to be like (flavor, strength, color, etc.)? there's a lot you can do here. Saison is pretty broad.

 

If you mean the peppery spice that's more of a fermentation temp issue. You still want to go above the normal ale temps of course, but just don't push it too much. And you don't want to go too low and have it stall. You might want to pick your yeast first.

 

Then I would recommend the Belgian Saison strain from WL/WY and not the WY French saison, which is spicier. Noble hops, styrian holdings, or American nobel derivatives like Sterling would be a good choice. As far as gravity goes, remember that the beer should finish very low, so it will have a higher alcohol content for its starting gravity than most ales.

If you can step mash, an hour at 145 and then a ramp to 155-162 and a short rest for saccharification will give you good fermentability and extract. Go with continental pilsner malt as a base if you can get it, and some wheat or vienna can add some nice complexity.

 

Brewed the Oval Abbey Ale from NB last year. I believe it was their interpretation of Orval, however I don't think it really came out like Orval at all. The yeast used was 3789-PC Trappist Blend - it has Brett in it. Though it was supposed the have a subdued Brett character - the funk was certainly there. With it's tart/funk flavor, we simply just started calling it a "saison".

Though the Trappist Blend was part of the private collection, I think you could simply do has jmich said and toss some Brett in along with a saison yeast. Or maybe Belgian Ardennes?

 

I also brewed the Oval Abbey Ale last year expecting it to be a clone of Orval. Just like you my beer didn’t come out anything like Orval. My beer was dominated by the Brett funky flavors. That kit came with 2 ounces of Styrian Goldings for dry hopping; a waste of two ounces of dry hops since with the funk flavors dominating there was no way you could notice the dry hop aroma.

I really can’t complain too much about this kit since the beer turned out very tasty; I personally liked the funky flavors. My beer was funky from the first time out of the bottle and it is still funky today (over 1 year later). Within the instructions they state: “Drinkable as soon as 2 months from brewing day, but save at least a couple of six packs for sampling at 6 months and 1 year”. My ‘read’ on this statement was that this beer would get even funkier with aging. My beer maintained the same level of funk throughout; basically no difference with aging. I think this was because the primary fermentation occurred with the combination of ‘regular’ and Brett yeast (Wyeast 3789 Trappist Blend). I would suspect that if you added Brett at bottling (like Orval does) that funk will increase with age.

Cheers!

 

That was my assumption as well. Yea, I just had one like a week ago (so it was just over a year from when we bottled). Still tasted the same as it did months ago.

 

“Still tasted the same as it did months ago.” Which means it still tasted good, right?

I think that the Oval Abbey Ale was a good kit (i.e., made a very tasty beer) but representing it as a Orval clone is not correct. I am guessing that the NB folks didn’t really brew this beer before putting this kit together. I am guessing that they just ‘believed’ the description that Wyeast provided with 3789 and formulated a recipe around this yeast.

Within the description that Wyeast provided with 3789 was “Subdued but classic Brett character”. There was nothing subdued with respect to Brett character in the beer I made with this yeast!

I don’t intend to be too critical on Wyeast here. I have used many, many different Wyeast strains and I have consistently obtained yeast performance very similar to their descriptions; often times exactly as they describe it. I suppose these Private Collection yeasts are often rather ‘new’ to Wyeast and they will obtain a better handle of them over multiple productions (as Wyeast gets to know them better)?

Cheers!

 

Quite good indeed. We expected one thing and got something completely different yet no less tasty. We even corked and caged them - so they look as good as they taste.