Saison Viejo - Further Tastings

The general character I'm getting from this beer over the course of the last few bottles is a minor amount of phenols..... minor spice, minor earth, a fair amount of esters giving off a fruitiness but not cloying and balanced with the phenols. Basically, what you would normally expect from some of your standard Belgian yeast strains. For the first time though I'm getting a major contribution in flavor from the hops.  The Motueka hops are really coming through with a tart fruitiness now (or at least in this bottle for whatever reason).  The commercial description they have of a lemon, lime, and tropical flavor is showing up quite a bit in the finish, giving it a big juicy/tart finish.  While "tart" is sometimes an overrated term for a standard saison that doesn't utilize wild yeast, the tartness here seems to be from the hops (and it is minor overall).

While this beer doesn't contain enough of the rustic/earth flavor for a saison, I really am loving it nonetheless. It's like a fantastic (in my mediocre palate's opinion) hybrid between a saison and Belgian strong pale ale. Very easy to drink and refreshing even at an ABV of 7.1%.

Some of the better saison or farmhouse beers these days utilize wild yeasts such as Brett and I'm just not there yet in terms of being able to use that (would need more equipment and time). But once I can start doing that a beer like this would have a delicious funkiness to it that some of us love.

Saison Viejo Taste Test #2

Compared to the first bottle I tested, this one has an extra week of carbonation at room temp and an extra week of cold crashing itself in the fridge as well. Somehow the ripe fruit, tropical, and lemon aromas have apparently left the building. I must say that's a good thing because they were a bit cloying and limited the refreshment factor of the beer. Replacing that was a better expression of the earthy component from the yeast. The body that was once too slick also now seems light years more thin and refreshing, but nowhere near watery. The carboation was good then, but even better now. On the higher end as I was shooting for. Nice and prickly and effervescent. A refreshing drink. It could have a better complexity in yeast derived flavors perhaps... I'll have to give that a deeper look on future bottles. For now I'm just happy with the difference between the first and second tastes.

(this was typed/published on my mobile phone)

Saison Viejo Taste Test #1

The first taste test comes after 2 weeks of room temp condition/carbonating and 3 days in the fridge cold conditioning. A pretty young beer.  I love the color and the stability of the head, it doesn't fade too fast.  The initial aroma was very lemony.  I'm not sure if that really was the hops or not (Motueka described as lemon/lime/tropical), but it actually didn't remain the entire drink.  A more ripe fruit took over... small hints of banana (didn't want that in there at ALL) and other tropical fruits.  I'm really inclined to think the fruits are from yeast esters. A bit of earth is found in the flavor.

The mouthfeel is very slick.  Way more than I thought it would be. 7% rolled oats was probably too much for a saison (would probably work perfectly in a stout).  Almost seems like it detracts a bit from the carbonation which on the surface seemed to be at a fine level. In addition to that, almost everyone reports that Wyeast 3711 French Farmhouse lends a smooth body to beers even after chewing them down to a final gravities near 1.001 or 1.002, keeping them from feeling watery. Saisons really need to be effervescent and I don't think this is going to get there with the slickness from those two sources. An ABV of 7.1 may play a third part there too. I'm hoping even more carbonation develops in the bottles that have more than 2 weeks worth of conditioning at room temperature. My goal was to get this on almost the "too high" carbonation side.

At this point, it feels more like a cross between a Belgian Strong Pale and a Saison.  That said, I could drink a glass of this easily, and no off flavors to me of any sort, unless the ripe fruit levels remain high in which I would be leaning towards calling them an off-flavor... at least in terms of what I was going for.

Saison Viejo

I preceded this latest brewing of a Saison beer by reading "Farmhouse Ales."  One of the main things I learned from it was to not be afraid to use many different grains.  Traditionally, farmers used whatever they had available to them, be it barley, rye, spelt, etc.  So even though my favorite (along with probably the most popular worldwide) commercial saison is brewed using Pilsner malt only, I wanted to give the more traditional way a try- at least for the malts.  The grist recipe I came up with was:

64.3% Belgian Pilsner Malt
14.3% Rye Malt
7.1% Wheat Malt
7.1% Munich Malt 7L (light) (for a touch of color/complexity)
7.1% Rolled Oats

I mashed this at between 144-150F. It dropped a little lower than I had wanted but I brought it back up for the last 30 minutes to about 148 or 149.  Not really worried it dropped so low, will just make the mash more fermentable, which is fine for this style.

As far as hops go, I was planning on using a fair overall charge of Galaxy hops, to give it kind of a "New World" flavor.  At the last minute I went with Motueka which is related to Saaz but should be a newer kicked up version of it.  It comes from New Zealand and is described as having flavors of lime, lemon, and background tropical notes.  I think this would work well in a modern saison. The hopping schedule looked like this:

0.4oz Magnum at 60 min (~32 IBU)
0.25 Motueka at 15 min (~6 IBU)
0.25 Motueka at 10 min (~4.5 IBU)
0.50 Motueka at 5 min (~5 IBU)
0.50 Motueka at 1 min (~1 IBU)

It's definitely going to be more hoppy than your average saison, but it won't be so much that it's similar to a Belgian IPA.

The yeast was a bit tricky.  I purchased White Labs 565 which is the dominant Saison Dupont strain... we all know how awesome it is.  However, many people report stuck ferments or very long ferments with it, sometimes stalling out around 1.030.  So I decided to use two yeasts, hoping to get a bit of the character from the 565, but using another yeast that is known to really chew through the wort and ferment the beer bone dry.  That yeast would be the French Farmhouse strain from Wyeast. I was only able to locate 1 pack within a 50 mile radius of me, in Fallbrook, and the pack was expired by 3 months. I still made the trek to buy it, and decided to do a 1L starter for it to get cell counts back up to at least a moderate level before pitching.  The starter seemed to work fine... and I was even able to step it up once adding 16oz more wort to it. 

The ferment started with the least amount of lag time I've ever had for a beer, so all those yeasts were ready to get to work.  I'm trying to keep the temperature between 65-70 for the first few days, letting it go above 70 to basically whatever it wants after that.  Hopefully that will dry it out as the warmer temps keep more yeast active, along with maybe helping them kick out some interesting flavors.

Saison Taste Off

The Saison style of beer originated in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium during the nineteenth century. Because they were not brewed in aseptic environments, multistrain fermentations took place giving the beer a ‘wild’ flavor and adding to its complexity.

Getting ready to brew a saison so I had to get into mode. The ordered ranking of these beers were as follows:

Saison Dupont (Tourpes, Belgium) - No surprise, it's only been brewed since like the 1800's.  100% Pils Malt. I love it.

Allagash Saison (Portland, ME) - Surprised how good this was, but really shouldn't be. I've enjoyed to loved pretty much everything I've had from them. Still was surprised how good this was. Brewed with Rye and Oats, two very good additions. Close 2nd.

Great Divide Colette (Denver, CO) - Initial pour I got a whiff of something sour/funky. Yum! Unfortunately that dissipated but it did retain a good deal of "Fantome" like flavors, almost coming through with a sweaty funkiness at times.  This was less of your spicy/peppery and more of your funky type saison.

Stillwater Stateside (Maryland Gypsy) - I love these guys. Always have.  I would drink Stateside every day but it doesn't quite surpass the top beers here.  It's a little more syrupy, which in saison terms is harder to drink for me. Some great earth and light fruit flavors though.  Prefer their Cellar Door.

Boulevard Tank 7 (Kansas City, MO) - Is the most bitter of the bunch, a nice citrusy aspect to it. Tied with Stillwater

Ommegang Glimmerglass (Cooperstown, NY) - Solid, drinkable. It was unfortunate to have been following a glass of the Allagash Saison. It was good but not up to Allagash's level.

Almanac Honey Saison (NorCal Gypsy) - More of a Belgian Pale Ale.  Nothing terrible, solid beer, but not much in the mold of a modern day saison. Still, a very good overall beer I would recommend to anyone.

Anchor Saison (San Francisco, CA) - Expected more from such a great brewery, but the addition of lemongrass, lemon peel, and ginger to this didn't do it for me.  It was super spicy in such a way it tasted like their Christmas Ale, which has never been a favorite of mine either.  Not a terrible beer, but not my favorite take on a saison.

Flying Fish Farmhouse Summer Ale (Somerdale, NJ) - No "farmhouse" beer should ever be brewed with the California Ale yeast strain. But apparently it is, as their website states it was brewed with "Chico" yeast. It was very clean, pale, light, just not much going on at all in this beer except super pale malt flavor. C'mon, the main flavor in a saison is the funky spice/earth from the YEAST!

Thoughts on brewing a saison:
1. Keep the grain bill light, I enjoy SRM's below 6... yellowish, golden, or slight orange hue.
2. Get it attenuated below 1.005 final gravity
3. Complexity- 2 yeast strains?? Dupont uses 4 or 5.
4. Fermentation temperatures in the mid 70's to 80's.
5. This is America, so, hop-forward with American (or New Zealand?!!?) hops.
6. High carbonation... not even worried about over-carbonating it.  Too much is better than too little.

Hoppy Pale Wheat Ale (semi-Fortunate Islands clone)

Fortunate Islands from Modern Times Brewing in San Diego has quickly become one of my favorite beers. A light (5% AV), hoppy pale ale that uses a large percentage of wheat in the grain bill (somewhere around 60% wheat). They use Citra and Amarillo as their hops.  Thankfully, the person they consulted with for this recipe (The Mad Fermentationist) is very open about his recipe and process in brewing this beer. I tried to stick as close as I could to that, however I used Citra and Mosaic hops.  The flavors from Mosaic hops are listed as citrus, pine, blueberry, earth, herbal, mint, bubblegum, lime peel, black pepper.... depending on the conditions they are in.  Amarillo (used in Fortunate Islands) are describes as floral, citrus, and tropical, so there is some overlap, but it won't taste exactly like Fortunate Islands no matter how close everything else is.

The recipe was as follows:
Grains & Yeast:
57% Wheat malt
38% 2-Row
5% Crystal 15L (Fortunate Islands uses a pretty hefty dose of Vienna malt)
Safale-05 dry yeast

Hops:
Bittered with 0.6 oz of Magnum at 60 min (48.2 IBU)
0.5 oz of Citra and 0.5 oz of Mosaic at flame out
0.5 oz of Citra and 0.5 oz of Mosaic after a 15 min rest before wort chilling
Dry hopped with 1oz of each, for 10 days @ ~65-70F.

Water:
I built the water from distilled, so that I could keep chloride low and sulfate high to accentuate the hops as much as possible. My scale is not very sensitive in weighing down to the gram (new cocaine-level measurement scale on its way!) so the numbers could be off, but the ratios should all still be the same.
Ca: 91
Mg: 10
Na: 0
Cl: 76
SO4: 159
Cl/SO4 ratio: 0.48

Mash:
I had to add 2mL of lactic acid to the mash to hit the correct pH with such light grains being used. My crappy pH paper didn't really test well (it's gotta be 8 years old now), or I may have hit too low of a pH. Overall it didn't really affect my efficiency much as I hit 70% which is fine for me. pH meter is on its way thankfully too. The mash temp started around 152 but fell to roughly 147 by the end... not bad, I was shooting for a more fermentable wort anyway.

Fermentation:
More of a lag time than I've had recently as I pitched the yeast around 3pm and didn't see any outright visible signs of fermentation until the morning. Not the worst ever, but probably a lag time of around 9-12 hours. Kept the temperature of the water bath I had the carboy immersed in at a pretty constant 63-65F (thanks to the help of my wife on days I was at work).  Next time I will shoot lower though, around 60F. Did not get a final gravity (forgot at bottling) but pretty sure this thing attenuated out nicely to probably about 1.010 or so, giving me a final ABV of around 5.5%.

Tasting #1 (not very long conditioning at fridge temps)
After 3 weeks carbonating, and about 4 days in the fridge it pours a hazy dark straw color, very slight tint of orange when held in outside light, but a dull brownish when indoors.  The head is very frothy and stable. In the smell you pick up a lot of citrus, a little bit of pine, and faint grain. When coldest, the taste starts out with a slight astringent hop character which really smooths out once it sits about 10 minutes. The combo of malts and hops here have a slight juicy character I love but don't often find in beer.  At this point it hasn't cold crash filtered itself enough yet... still lots of polyphenols (tannins) giving off a definite "green" beer taste.  I think the yeast is still quite dense in solution are also adding to the "unclean" flavor.  Needs more time in the fridge.

Further Tastings:
After about a week in the fridge there was still too much yeast and tannins lingering in solution, not having crashed out and filtered themselves to the bottom yet.  However, after 2 weeks, I'm getting a fantastic clean character which allows me to rate this beer as a moderately successful attempt at a pale ale type beer.  Pale ales are hard to brew because they need to be clean tasting.  This 2 week cold conditioned bottle is expressing a very nice flavor of wheat, citrusy hops also coming through as some stone fruit, and a bit of mint or evergreen (I kinda like but kinda don't like this characteristic). The beer is clarifying quite nicely. Even indoors in low/fluorescent light it's coming through a nice golden, slightly hazy probably due still to some yeast, some polyphenols (from multiple sources including the dry hops). It needs a bit more carbonation.  I would go up a half

2 weeks @ fridge temps

volume per liter.   However, looking at this as objectively as possible, this beer didn't turn out anywhere near the level of Fortunate Islands perfection (stupid to think it ever would), but it's a beer I could see a moderately successful brewpub offering up on tap.  Not great, not bad.

Just off the top of my head, things I need to change for next time are: filtering the first runnings of my mash better, obtaining a more clear wort for fermentation using whirlpooling to sediment out the hops and other break material, and increase the carbonation about a quarter to a half volume (from 2.4'ish to 2.8 or 3) and up the bittering addition at 60min to around .8oz.