Belgian/French Ales White Wine Saison- AG

How did you mash at 149 and still get 3711 to stop at 1.005?

 

I propose we do not lose the "Beer name:, Beer Style: tags...etc" in the beginning of the recipe post.

Definitely like the idea of the recipe, though. I was thinking of actually using some white wine in a future saison recipe, or white grape must. But I've always been more appreciated of beers that didn't actually use the ingredients suggested in the name of the beer as you did here.

 

Would you happen to have a mini mash/extract recipe or conversion for this one? I feel like the NS hop profile fits really well with this style.

NZ and AU hops have started to grow on me lately (thanks to LT Limbo) but I can't say as though I've had a really good beer showcasing The Nelson Sauvin hops that have wowed me; All of the pale ales and IPA's that I've had have been....blah.

I haven't brewed a saison yet so I'm thinking that I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here.

 

I picked up all the fixin's to brew this next weekend today at my LHBS. I ran it through beersmith and i'm going to cut back on the NS hops just a bit to make the IBU's work for the style and am going to use 6# of Pilsen DME for the base malt. Im sticking with the quantity and type of specialty grains that you have listed other than the golden naked oats (my LHBS only carries flaked oats). I have a couple of questions for ya on brewing this:

1)I'm going to steep/mini mash the specialty grains in a muslin bag; is 150 degrees for an hour still the ideal temp and time for this?

2) Would I still need to do a 90 min. boil since i'm using DME instead of grain?

 

Just cracked my first bomber of this modified recipe tonight after about a week of carbing in the bottle in my basement and all I can say is....Wow, this one is a winner.

I ending up using flaked oats instead of GNO, Pilsen DME in place of the pilsner malt and ended up dryhopping an ounce of NS hops for 5 days post fermentation but other than that everything remained pretty much the same. Im really impressed with 3711 yeast which was done fermenting in about 6 days. I got lucky with the weather and left the carboy in my kitchen (covered with a t-shirt) and we had temperatures ranging from 60-90 which i think aided in success quite a bit. Its by far the best of the 4 batches that i've brewed thus far and the least involved to boot.

the color is dirty straw and a touch hazy. Lots of apple, pear, grape, bubble gum, white wine and spicy barnyard funk notes in the nose and mouth and its quite dry and refreshing. Its also the first beer that I genuinely feel comfortable sharing with others and that's no small compliment because I am an unabashed perfectionist and worry wort. Many thanks for sharing this @FATC1TY its going to become a staple at my house.

 

I'm curious to play with this. It sounds awesome.

 

What does the Acid malt do for you in this recipe? Have you done it without the Acid? Thoughts on the difference if so?

P.S. as I was reading the recipe, I kept waiting to see where you added the wine

 

In my particular case (and what I didn't know at the time) was that it helped reduce the alkalinity in my water. The result was a marked improvement over all of the beers that I had brewed.

 

Would be interested to try this. I've also heard of people using wine yeasts to ferment saisons. Used narbonne white wine yeast on a cider this past fall, with a nice dry, tart finish. I'd be curious to see how it would work on this style. I'll stick with your recipe though if I end up trying it. There's always room for experimentation down the road

 

I had really good luck free fermenting 3711 with this recipe last year at this time and I think im going to try and build on that and add some oak cubes soaked in chardonnay this year. It looks like our temps are going to be in the mid 80's for the next few weeks which should be ideal.

 

This looks delicious! I recently did a french saison with citra & mosaic. For half the batch I added about 8 oz sauvignon blanc per gallon in the bottling bucket. Wine version > non wine version. I would definitely do a similar experiment with this recipe especially since Nelson is known to blend well with sauvignon blanc.

 

@FATC1TY any particular reason for the 90 minute boil? If I'm doing BIAB could I just adjust my quantities to convert to a 60 min boil?

 

I just brewed this on Saturday. The only deviation I made from the recipe was using two packets of Belle Saison for yeast. I'm 48 hours in, and this is sitting at 1.000 gravity. I also fermented on the warm side (upper 70's), so that probably played a part in the low gravity.

 

Post how it turns out. I was thinking about belle saison. The nelson hops sound interesting

 

Just brewed this beer as per the recipe exactly - now I don't have any experience fruiting beers, but I have heaps of saskatoon berries (similar to blueberries) ripening up by the river near my house at the moment.

I was thinking about racking this beer onto a few pounds of pureed sanitized saskatoons for a week or so just to give it a bit of color , a littttttle flavor, and hopefully not a lot of sweetness.

Do you think this would be a good candidate for fruit or will the Nelson hops / 3711 conflict with a fruit addition?

 

This is the first time I've used Nelson Sauvin hops, so I'm not sure. You could always try splitting the batch so as not to risk the whole volume if the results weren't great.

 

It's only been in the bottle about two weeks, but here it is. The Nelson hops are definitely present on the nose, but not as prominent as I was expecting. This was the first time I used RO water and tried to build my profile, so I'm guessing I probably didn't add enough CaCl or something. This is also my first time using a Saison yeast, and right now it tastes very reminiscent of a Hefe to me. It has promise.

Thanks for the recipe @FATC1TY!

 

Looks delicious. Interesting it tastes like a Hefe to you.

I ended up racking my whole batch onto about 2.5 lbs of saskatoons. The fermenter looks entirely purple, but when I pull a sample to check gravity, there is only the faintest pinkish hue, and the flavor from the berries is essentially non detectable. I think what I have here is a slightly boozier saison from the added sugar from the berries. I finished at 1.004. Cold conditioning for a few days and will bottle. I will post a pic when it is done !

I should add my sample tasted very very VERY white wine-ish. Its so dry, it tastes like a glass of pino grigio. I can tell I am going to like this beer.

 

Saskatoons are similar to blueberries, aren't they? I racked a mead onto blueberries last year, and their flavor was also undetectable in the final product. I'm thinking that certain berries just don't have a very assertive flavor.

 

Yes Saskatoons are very similar - I think I would have to double or triple the ammount to get the color I wanted, which would reduce the batch size too much I think. It's funny because my hands were stained purple, and the fermenter is so dark... I'll take a picture of one in a thicker tulip glass, maybe that will show the colour - stay tuned

 

Two weeks in the bottle was definitely too early to try this beer. Here is a little over a week after the previous picture, and it's clarified a lot. The yeast dropping out has definitely caused some of those hefeweizeny flavors that I was experiencing to go away, and now it's tasting much more crisp.

 

Here is the finished Saskatoon Berry edition of the White Wine Saison:





It tastes really good. The Saskatoons turned the fermentor a dark purple, but honestly, its like it just made the SRM go up, where I was expecting the pale color of the base beer to simply take on a pinkish hue.

The color is very nice though, and if you look at just the right angle you can see the foam is slightly pink, as is the beer. Would probably add another pound or two next time.

Taste is great - very white wine indeed, not too sure if the berries are bringing much to the table or not, I guess that's why it would have been nice to split the batch !

Cheers!