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.