False Sun - Hoppy Black Saison

If Black Saison isn’t a classic style, Hoppy Black Saison certainly isn’t. Yet, I’ve found myself making a hoppy black saison for the third time. Like my two previous batches this is intended to blend citrusy American hops, roasty dark malt character, and the spice and fruit of saison yeast. With that in mind I also greatly changed this recipe out of fear of getting too much chocolate/roast flavors and did not include any citrus peel in an attempt to let the hops shine on their own. I’ve also lost the original recipe at this point so it would be hard to entirely recreate even if I wanted to.

Brewday: 1/15/23

Preboil gravity: 1.035 at 7.25 gallons

Boiled 90 minutes

Post boil gravity: 1.047 at 5.25 gallons

1/19/23: This beer has been showing slight signs of fermentation (krausen and bubbles in the airlock) since the day after pitching yeast but the airlock bubbles have slowed rapidly to less than once a minute and I was worried this one may have stalled so I took a hydrometer reading. Gravity sample showed 1.006, indicating that rather than a stall it may have already reached final gravity as it’s below the estimated FG less than 4 days after pitching the yeast. This isn’t entirely surprising for such a fast working and attenuative yeast (not to mention an attenuative malt/sugar bill) but considering the beer has spent most of the time with ambient temperatures in the upper 60s it’s impressive how quickly it’s chewed through the sugars. Flavor is nice, fairly spicy but not clove-like from the yeast, a blend of coffee and dark fruit from the malts, yeast, and sugar, and a refreshing orange-like citrus character from the hops. Still a decent layer of yeast and this one could attenuate even further so it likely won’t be kegged for another couple of weeks but happy with where it seems to be heading at this point.

1/26/23: Krausen has fallen and it isn’t showing any signs of active fermentation. Added 1 oz each of American Cascade and French Strisselspalt.

1/28/23: Kegged and placed in chest freezer at 50F and 20PSI (targeting 2.7 volumes of CO2). Will likely need to adjust the pressure as the temperature in the freezer gets adjusted around a lagering schedule. Taste is interesting, not a lot of obvious yeast character and maybe not as dry as I expect from a saison with both the hops and candi syrup seeming to contribute a lot of fruitiness and some earthy flavors. All around it currently seems a little disjointed and I’m partially wishing I hadn’t added the D-90 but hopefully some carbonation and time will make everything a little more cohesive and saison like.

3/6/23: Tasting notes.

Aroma: Big pepper and fresh cut grass jumps out of the glass, lemony citrus notes eventually mingle in alongside light notes of dried fruit and black cherry.

Appearance: Very dark brown, approaching black with a large fluffy tan head that slowly fades to a thin layer leaving behind lots of foam clinging to the sides. Holding it to the light shows a nice garnet tint though clarity is only medium and I wonder if this one is near the end of the keg as there’s a small amount of what appears to be hop matter in the bottom of the glass that I haven’t noticed on previous pours. Not sure I would want this to look much different other than the particulate.

Taste: Roastier than the nose, with a very mild coffee note throughout. Light pepper and fruitiness from the yeast mingle with light grapefruit and tangerine peel alongside plum, raisin, and date. There’s probably a little bit too much going on though losing any one of the qualities or boosting the hoppiness might make the rest work better. Finish is lightly bitter leaving a subtle blend of fruitiness and the very light coffee impression.

Mouthfeel: This one is very heavily carbonated. This would probably be considered overcarbonation for most styles but I like this much in a saison and it helps the flavors all pop. Body is medium/medium-low, not as dry as would be expected in a saison but I think it mostly works here.

Overall: After more than a month on tap I’m still not really sure how to feel about this one. Part of me regrets using the D-90 as the dark fruit characters it adds seems to be one thing too many in a beer that also features so much from the hops, yeast, and malt. On the other hand, I frequently find myself having a second glass to try to determine how I felt about the first, so it has me going back for more. The hops have faded a bit at this point and probably could’ve been heavier in the first place. Certainly an interesting beer, in some ways it combines a Belgian Saison, a Belgian Dubbel, an American Pale Ale, and a German Schwartzbier all at once and surprisingly somehow almost manages to pull it all off. If I brew this again I will likely use more late/dry hops, an addition of orange peel to increase the citrus character, and drop the candi sugar, to let this be closer to the Black IPA and Saison hybrid I intended when first coming up with this idea.

Witbier Attempt 2 (gone sour)

Orange peels were zested with a cheese grater. Under the 17g of peel is the 10g of coriander and 1g of grains of paradise. I also added 4g of chamomile.

It's been a long time since I attempted to brew a witbier. While that beer was alright at first, it seemed to develop a metallic taste over time  and ended up not being all that enjoyable. For this attempt I hoped to use some of the advice I've learned over time, especially from Randy Mosher's great Radical Brewing. Some of those tips include using fresh citrus peel, opting for Indian coriander, and adding chamomile into the mix. I also threw in some of my own twists by including grains of paradise and including 3 types of wheat (unmalted (raw), torrified, and malted) and golden naked oats, along with 6-row barley (more on that in another post).

4 different adjuncts: bottom/right: malted wheat, left: golden naked oats, top center: torrified wheat, top right (small amount of light colored grains) unmalted (raw) wheat.

Note to self: use rice hills when brewing a wheat beer. This one got so stuck trying to runoff I ended up disconnecting the barb on the out spigot from where it attaches to the inlet under the false bottom, making sure that there was no chance of runoff. I ended up having to put the wort/grains through a double colander filtering setup. Very low efficiency rate, tons of frustration, plenty of lost wort and grains spilled everywhere, but hopefully all is not lost as I still ended up with a wort that showed moderate signs of fermentation less than 12 hours after pitching.

In the end I added 6 oz. of dry wheat malt extract to the 6 gallons of pre-boil wort to up the gravity from the drastically low 1.025 level. 

This beer seems to have gotten infected, probably time to trash the bucket. The beer has some slight off flavors with a bit of a pretzel/chemical smell in the nose and a touch of plastic in the flavor. Rather than give up on the beer already I added a few vials of blends I have been saving but didn't have any specific plans for. The contents of these vials include several commercial saison strains, Brettanomyces Lambicus, Lactobacillus Delbruekii, and BKYeast's C2 strain. While not undrinkable the beer isn't what I wanted it to be so I'm hoping these strains can improve the beer even if they take it in a very different direction.

8/31/16
Tasting pretty pleasant, slightly tart but with more citrus character than it had in the last tasting and no noticeable off flavors.

9/25/16

Gravity at 1.007. Kegged 3 gallons straight, blended the rest with the bottom of my sweet cherry lambic (mostly purée). Flavor is candied orange, bread dough, cherry pie, and low-moderate tartness.

Fermentables
Amount	Fermentable	Maltster	Use	PPG	Color
4.5 lb	6-Row (US)	Any	Mash	35	1 °L
2.0 lb	Torrified Wheat	Any	Boil	36	2 °L
1.0 lb	Unmalted Wheat (BE)	Any	Boil	36	2 °L
1.0 lb	Wheat Malt (DE)	Any	Boil	37	2 °L
0.5 lb	Golden Naked Oats (UK)	Any	Boil	33	10 °L
0.35 lb	Dry Malt Extract - Wheat	Any	Boil	42	3 °L
Hops
Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
1.0 oz	East Kent Golding (UK)	30 min	Boil	Pellet	5.00
Yeasts
Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Belgian Wit Ale Yeast	White Labs WLP400	0.76
Extras
Amount	Name	Time	Use
1.0 g	Grains of Paradise	5.0 min	Boil
4.0 g	Chamomile (Dried)	5.0 min	Boil
10.0 g	Coriander Seed	5.0 min	Boil
16.0 g	Orange Peel	5.0 min	Boil
Mash steps
Step	Heat Source	Target Temp	Time
Protein Rest	Infusion	115.0 °F	15 min
Saccharification Rest	Infusion	155.0 °F	60 min

Belgian Golden Strong and Smoked Helles Parti-gyle

Just over 2 years ago I brewed a series of Belgians, including an interesting take on a Belgian Golden Strong. Belgian Golden Strong Ales (BGSAs) have been one of my favorite styles since the first time I tried Duvel Green on my 21st birthday and was opened to a whole new world of Belgian beer. With only one beer currently in my kegerator I decided I should throw together something that could be both interesting and refreshing now that spring is here. I also didn't want to solely commit to a BGSA and decided it would be a good time to perform a pseudo parti-gyle in order to get 2 different beers.

I decided that the smaller beer could be a good base for my third attempt at lagering since the kegerator/ferment chamber had space available. Playing around with the numbers I realized that by adding just a little pale malt, and some specialty malts I would be able to make a smoked Helles. While I haven't had a smoked Helles before, it seemed like another fitting beer for spring with a balance of both intriguing components and moderate drinkability.

I brewed the beers on the last day of winter in a cold mix of rain, sleet, and snow. While the weather added some difficulty and I didn't do everything quite as efficiently as I could have, the day went well overall and hopefully I'll come out of it with 2 tasty beers for only a couple hours more work than I would have had to do for 1. The addition of grains required a second mash and made this not a true parti-gyle but allowed me to give more variability to the beers produced and I plan to perform similar split batch procedures in the future. One goal moving forward will be to better line up the timing for the two batches to minimize how much additional time is required.

Designing the two recipes was a somewhat iterative process as I came up with a general idea for each recipe separately, then used a parti-gyle calculator to identify that I would need a 1.045 OG at 6 gallons, then came up with the overall malt bill, then went back and refined the individual recipes. the recipes shown below are my best attempt to show how to recreate the beers if not done together and have been adjusted slightly due to hitting higher efficiency than expected. The base malts used aren't traditional but I was making due with what I had including the last of my bags of Pilsner and 2-row and just enough Maris Otter to hit my required amounts.

Future Laws:
Belgian Golden Strong Ale

OG	1.083
FG	1.017
IBU	29
SRM	3
ABV	9%

Fermentables
Amount	Fermentable	Maltster	Use	PPG	Color
4.0 lb	2-Row (US)	Briess	Mash	37	1 °L
2.0 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	1 °L
1.5 lb	Sucrose	N/A	Boil	46	0 °L
0.67 lb	Maris Otter Pale	Thomas Fawcett & Sons	Mash	38	3 °L

Hops
Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
1.5 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	45 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%
1.5 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	15 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%

Yeast
Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Golden Pear Belgian	Gigayeast	80.00%

Mash steps
Step	Heat Source	Target Temp	Time
Saccharification Rest	Infusion	146.0 °F	30 min
Saccharification Rest	Infusion	154.0 °F	30 min

Of Greater Things:

Smoked Munich Helles

OG	1.054
FG	1.013
IBU	15
SRM	4
ABV	5.40%

Fermentables
Amount	Fermentable	Maltster	Use	PPG	Color
2.0 lb	Maris Otter Pale (UK)	Thomas Fawcett & Sons	Mash	38	3 °L
1.5 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	1 °L
1.5 lb	2-Row (US)	Briess	Mash	37	1 °L
0.5 lb	CaraHell (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	34	11 °L
0.5 lb	Smoked Malt (US)	Briess	Mash	37	5 °L

Hops
Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
1.0 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	45 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%

Yeast
Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
German Lager Yeast	White Labs WLP830	76.50%
German Lager Yeast	White Labs WLP830	76.50%

Short Leash (aka #6) Rebrew

I first brewed a Belgian session IPA (a la Raging Bitch but toned down) in my first year of brewing as a birthday gift to my father. He liked it so much that he has regularly asked if I plan to re-brew it ever since. Today I finally decided to give it a go using a similar base recipe but converted to my current all grain setup and substituting hops as needed to use what I had on hand (Nugget in place of Warrior).

Brew Day (9/26/15)
~9 Brix (~1.035 gravity) pre-boil.
Boiled for 45 minutes, cooled to 80 degrees in under than 30 minutes with my new immersion chiller. A huge improvement over my previous ice bath times of an hour plus.
11.5 Brix (1.043 gravity) post-boil.
Wort split between two 3 gallon better bottles. One carboy was moved to my chest freezer at 45 degrees with the temperature controller set to 65 to allow for slow cooling. The other carboy was left at room temperature around 68 degrees.

9/27/15
Fermentor at room temp bubbling away, the one in the chest freezer is just barely starting to get going around 55 degrees

9/28/15
Both batches fermenting vigorously, fermentation chamber up to 60 degrees.

10/11/15
Dry hop blend added to each carboy.

10/17/15
I didn't notice a large difference between the two batches and didn't have any 3 gallon kegs available so I decided to blend them together into a single 5 gallon keg.  PSI set to 30 for 2 days, then will drop to 10.

11/8/2015
Tasting Notes

Appearance: Pours with a large head that lasts for a long time leaving thick foam on the sides of the glass as it slowly falls.  Color is a nice shade of copper with just a touch of cloudiness and some nice carbonation bubbles.  All around a pretty good looking IPA.

Smell: Floral and slightly grassy hop character mix with sweet and stone fruit-y yeast and malt characters. There's also little bit of bread and just a touch of phenolic spice. Could use a more pungent and more interesting hop aroma.

Taste: Dry and mildly spicy on the tongue with just moderate hop flavor but fairly high bitterness on the end. The overall impression is decidedly more bitter and spicy than the fruity and pungent flavors I was aiming for.

Mouthfeel: It took a while for this one to carbonate correctly but it's now at a solid level. The beer is unsurprisingly dry, but with the high bitterness it is a little too attenuated.

Overall: Like a lot of my recent IPA's this one falls in the drinkable but not very good category.  The hop flavor and aroma are disappointing and I think the yeast would have done better at a higher temperature in order to bring out more fruity esters and make it feel more "Belgian" instead of just being dry and spicy.  I am happy with the color and malt profile.

It's hard for me to tell exactly what's been wrong with my past few hoppy beers. I probably need to evaluate every aspect: the ingredients including the type, quality, and age of hops being used and the processes including how and when hops are added in the boil, steep, and dry-hop. For example: I haven't been weighting my dry-hop bags, could that be limiting the ability for the flavor to come out or increasing the oxidation rate?

For this batch I'm going to add an ounce of Amarillo hops to the keg to try and improve it, though I doubt it will get above drinkable.