Saison recipe critique

I'll go out on a limb and say your plan is overly complicated. You have the complexity of mixing saison yeast with candi sugar, with American hops, with white-wine-French oak, with brett, with fresh fruit. Other than barrel aging I don't know how it could be more complex. And this is your first saison.

This is not a zinger, not trying to talk you out of anything, and I think it would be interesting to see what happens. But it will be difficult to identity the causes of any successes or faults in the final product. The best saison I've ever had is a single grain, simple yeast, two hops, and nothing else.

 

abv is a touch high for adding fruit, IMHO saisons should be lower OG than most people make them

Why the need for the DME, why not up your grain a bit? Also, skip the clear candy sugar and just use plain ol' sugar, as they are identical

interesting hop combo, could be good with apricot, dont know about it meshing with oak though

This last step is overly complex, 30days is a long primary to then follow up with a long secondary

Why are you adding brett? Seems to be a gimmicky thing in this recipe. I would drop it and the oak, too many flavors going on, an oak (vanilla/coconut) isnt one I think would mesh well in this beer

No, 2# isnt too much

Dont add the brett, too many things in this beer, especially if you only want a hint

No 34 is good

Bit too complex for my tastes, I would personally prefer nothing but pils (no sugar - especially when adding fruit)

your gonna get absolutely 0 flavor contribution from the wine if you just soak chips in it, I would just toss the chips in if you must use them, or IMO skip using them. If you want a wine flavor in the beer, dump some in

sounds like you may not want any advice on this beer then , let recap

Brett
Candy sugar
Wine soaked oak
apricots
NZ and US hops

Too much, if you want a sofie-esque flavor profile, I'd start with Brett up front, drop the NZ hops, skip the apricots, add some wine to the 2ndary and maybe a touch of vanilla (sub for used wine barrel)

 

ingredients aside, I mash at 148 for saisons. When it comes to saisons, the drier the better (at least for me).

 

You should check out Kai Troester's or Greg Doss' work on mash temp and wort fermentability. At least under their experimental conditions, 148F was not the sweet spot for fermentability with single infusion mashes. Kai's peaked at 151F, and Greg's at 152F.

 

I will echo @ryane and also add a few things. Your FG is going to be way lower than that 1.010 you estimated for. This yeast will att in the mid to upper 80% range, especially with the sugar, and if you add Brett in there you are looking at over 90% app att. This strain will also be done in just over a week, with another week or so to clean up, it is fast and fierce, not as fierce as 3711, but I have gone from mash to bottle in 1 week with it (lower OG than you). I would also say there is too much going on, pick 1, maybe 2 things. 2# Apricot will not show up much in the final product, I did 4# and didn't get much other than chunks of fruit and gushers. I would nix the DME and Sugar, just Pils and Wheat, use the same hops as is, ferment 3 weeks, then hit it with Brett at bottling (as long as you are in the 1.006 or below for the FG you should be fine, I have bottled 2 3724 Saisons like this and a 3726 with Lacro, Pedio, and Brett, standard 12 oz reused bottles, and let them age for well over 15 months, never one bottle bomb).

 

you can save 4 bux by using normal sugar

 

get rid of the American hops, you got too much going on. everything else is good. if you really like the american hops get rid of the apricot or the oak

You may want to mash lower, i.e. 148/9 but 150 is also good

 

First off, I thought the ingredients of the original recipe sounded great, and I love American/NZ hops in a saison, though I would have moved all those hops to flameout. To contradict what others have said, I've fermented saisons on top of wine-soaked oak cubes for a month and gotten very good results at a rate of 1oz/5gallons. It's not too strong, but absolutely noticeable. 2 pounds of apricot wouldn't add too much, but could provide a nice background acidity and light fruitiness.

Otherwise, as others have said, the OG was too high and the FG should be quite a bit lower than 1.010.

If you use Brett, yes you would just mix at bottling with priming sugar. You could also add a few drops to separate bottles if you don't want the whole batch to have Brett. Either method works fine.

If you are going to use Brett, make sure to account for the fact that it may attenuate things quite a bit more, and that each specific gravity point that it ferments further is going to add another half volume of carbonation, e.g., if you bottle at 1.004 and the Brett takes it to 1.000, that's going to be 2 volumes of CO2. Given that, it may make more sense to take a portion of the batch and secondary with Brett until the gravity is stable before bottling that portion.

Best of luck, and let us know how it turns out!

 

You should figure that an OG of 1.060 on this beer should finish around 1.007 with that yeast and malt bill/mash temp. That is 6.7% ABV right there, plus whatever the Brett does. Personally I would drop it back to 1.054 or so, then your OG should be around 1.006 (6.2%), add the Brett and it will drop more over time into the 1.004-1.003 range giving you 6.5-6.7%. The higher the FG on the primary the longer the Brett will have to work, and the more pronounced Brett character you will get. If the FG is too high you will want to do a secondary instead of bottles.

As far as bottling, I would add dregs from 1-2 Orval to the bottling bucket as you rack the beer in and mix it well with along with the priming solution, then proceed as usual. I did a Saison with a 1.044, blend of Bobek and Citra, a more complex malt bill, fermented with 3724, then bottled with Orval, finished at 1.004, 5.3% ABV, and at 7 months in the bottle took 2nd place in a BJCP comp for category 16. One of my favorites.

 

No problem at all. That timing makes sense on transferring to secondary, though you may need a bit more than two weeks depending on conditions. I'd wait until the gravity is 1.010 or below. A package of Brett from Wyeast is a good amount. Lowering the OG is a good idea. It may not get this far, but when doing your alcohol calculation, I would just assume that it'll get to 1.000-1.002.

Orval is very widely available and you should be able to get it at any decent bottle shop. You could certainly sub the Orval dregs in for the Wyeast pack.

 

Orval should be relatively easy to get if you have a decent bottleshop anywhere near you. I never buy packages of Brett or bacteria from Wyeast, that pack aint worth $11+ dollars. I can buy about 3 bottles of Orval for that price and get to drink 3 bottles of amazing beer. That money to WY gets you nothing to drink with it.

 

What is the best commercial Saison you have ever drunk?

Let me chip in with a couple more comments based on this being your first Saison:

I don't see the need for 23% wheat, consider reducing or eliminating.

Noble hops are the standard (I have used American hops), but if the yeast does it job they will disappear at the amounts you listed. And this is before the brett and aging takes there cut into the hop aroma.

Am I the only one to be suspicious of 3726 at 70º? I've not used it, only it's cousins, but I start in the high 70s and finish in the mid 80s.

This batch begs to be split up into multiple secondaries (1 gallon'ers). This is new territory for you and if you mess up the brett, or fruit, or oak, or ??? you can identify by batch the culprit. I would keep one batch "pure", absolutely no additives . . . possible this may be your winner. I'm doubtful there are commercial Saisons as complex as your toned-down version. Which leads back to my first sentence . . . what do you really like?

 

Just chiming in with some notes, since I've brewed a ton of saisons lately. 3726 will do fine at 70 F (or hotter), and you can expect it to finish at around 1.004 to 1.008. As recommended already, ditch the wyeast brett and pitch dregs from a couple of Orval bottles. You'll get to enjoy one of the finest beers in the world, and the dregs will work fine. You'll actually get more complexity from the Orval dregs (which also contain a sacc strain) than just the wyeast brett brux. I like to pitch 3726, then add Orval dregs 4 or 5 days in. It's a wonderful combination.

For your first attempt at a saison, I'd go with a straightforward, simple, traditional recipe approach rather than your "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. With a saison, the yeast is the star of the show, and overly complex recipes will muddle the flavors and prevent the yeast from shining. Simple grain bill, noble hops (1 or 2 max) and no weird additions tend to yield the best results, in my opinion. Look at Dupond's "old provision" recipe: pilsener malt, east kent and styrian goldings hops, and yeast. That's it...