brewed first batch, now what?

Patience grasshopper!

My advice would to forget about the Saison for a month.

Bottle it, and wait two more weeks to fully carbonate.

Drink it and think about what changes might improve it.

Its going to feel like the longest six weeks of you life, dont give in!

Good Luck

 

I agree with jmich24 about being patient, but if you decide to split the batch for experimentation, you need to at least keep a good amount of the original recipe to drink over a period of time as the beer matures some of the beer so that you can evaluate your brewing skills, procedures, etc. in case errors/flaws show up in the finished product. Getting used to the techniques and your equipment is the key thing that you want to do on your first beers. But it's your beer, so you can do with it whatever you want.

 

A good way to fill the time while you wait for your saison to be ready would be to brew more beer!

 

Most of us would tell you to focus on process for you first (couple) of batches. Get good at making good beer before you make an espresso, choco, vanilla, oaked beer.

That said, you have the right idea to draw a little off the base beer to experiment with. You'll find that a lot of your beers take months to shape up and be very drinkable.

After process I'd recommend pipeline. I'm always drinking my beers too soon. By the time I get to my last 6 pack I realize that the brew was pretty good. Try to make sure you're drinking your beer at the right time. Get ready to be needing a couple hundred clean bottles and fill `em up.

 

I tend to agree that it's best to start slowly. Making a crazy beer sounds fun, but if it turns out poorly, you really have very little idea why. Is that funny flavor you don't like from the wine soaked oak spirals, does it come from a process problem, or is it from a particular hop you've never used before? I started getting complicated way too early, and churned out some rather poor beers as a result (with no definite idea as to why...).

My suggestion would be to follow this very sound advice:

Most of my beers drink OK after 3 weeks in the bottle, but every week they seem to get better and better. So I generally try to have new stuff in the pipeline, which necessarily tricks me into being patient with those that aren't quite ready yet. It doesn't necessarily make you a "better" brewer, but you end up drinking your beers when they are at their best, which has a bit of the same end result.