Saison Dupont Clone

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Dr Jacoby

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I cobbled this after doing a bit of research on the techniques used by the Dupont brewery. The numbers are slightly different to accomodate my own system. For example, Dupont achieve attenuation levels into the 90's; I'll probably struggle on that front (hence the slightly higher OG and FG). Also, they use pilsner malt only. I've decided to add some light caramalt to achieve the required colour. Apart from that the recipe seems to be fairly accurate.

Size: 18.0 L
Efficiency: 77.0%
Attenuation: 85.0%

Original Gravity: 1.057
Final Gravity: 1.009
Color: 10.55
Alcohol: 6.34%
Bitterness: 32.7

Ingredients:
4250 g Premium Pilsen Malt (92.5%)
350 g Caramalt 15 (7.5%)
45.0 g East Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min (43%)
60.0 g Styrian Goldings (4.3%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min (57%)
WYeast 3724 Belgian Saison Yeast

Mashed at 63C for 50 minutes. Raised the temperature to 68C for 20 minutes.

The water was treated with calcium sulphate to accentuate the hop flavours. I also added two tsps of yeast nutrient to the boil to help the yeast to attenuate fully (Dupont's yeast can be extremely sluggish).

Primary fermentation lasted 7 days at 29C (yes, 29C! Gotta love those crazy Belgian brewers!) and was then dropped to 22C and held there for a further week. Dupont ferment the beer at 30-35C to speed the process up, but this is not essential as the same effect can be achieved at 27-30C, minimising the risk of introducing higher fusol alcohols. The gravity before bottling was 1.010, which was just about perfect since I had planned to follow Dupont's own method of warm conditioning the beer in bottles for 6 weeks at 23C to help the yeast to attenuate fully.

The beer was carbonated at 3.0 volumes of Co2.

It's been two weeks since I bottled the beer so I cracked one open yesterday to check the progress. It was absolutely delicious with lots of aromatic spice and an amazingly fluffy head! Who says you need spices to make a spicy beer! IMO, it was almost identical to the real thing.
 
Sounds nice I brewed a saison using yeast recultured from a Dupont bottle and I think it turned out pretty well. It was mid-summer I had no temperature control at the time so I wanted to do something that liked it hot. It got down to 1004, perhaps the sugar helped. I'll most likely brew another one in the summer.
My recipe is here if you are interested.

I was pointed to this one as well when I was planning mine
 
It's a great beer to brew because it's just so damn weird! I love the fact that the yeast provides so much of the flavour. Did you make the candi sugar yourself? I'm planning on brewing a Rochfort 8 clone next, which requires dark candi sugar. I have a jam thermometer so I'm going to give it a go.
 
I know what you mean about it being good because it is weird. I was fun putting a brew belt on the fermenter in the middle of summer just because it is such bad practice for just about anything else.

A Rochefort 8 clone sounds good, do you have the yeast?

I didn't make the candi sugar but it was made by a mate of mine using the guide quoted here

the original page is down but you can find it using the url cited at the page above and archive.org

There are lots of how-to guides out there. Steve said it was easy. I'll probably give it a go sometime soon as I have belgian brews on the mind at the moment.
 
Yea, I'm using Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II, which is the Rochfort strain. I'll post the recipe I'm using when I get a chance. It's not quite the same as the one Rochfort use themselves but it's apparently about as good as its gets for the homebrewer. The biggest problem is to reach their insanely high attenuation levels.

The candy sugar guide in that link is great! It's quite similar to another one I found here (the first technique).
 
My first attempt at a trappist style beer used that yeast. I decided to just bosh it in and see what happened.

Made up the starter, pitched at 19c and left the FV open next to a radiator... after 2 days it had got up to 30c!

Obviously, this gave the beer a massive banana nose, but a month of aging balanced it nicely. I got the attenuation up to 82% in the process. OG was 1.080 and FG 1015 after 5 days primary!

Haven't been able to source the yeast since and have been using white's 530, ferments much slower and doesn't get as hot, have had the next batch in the FV for 9 days now and its gone from 1083 to 1020. At between 19 and 23c
 
I have yet to make an abbey style beer, but I am planning to do one. I find the whole bananas thing a bit odd as in my experience most of them don't really have much of a banana taste (Karmeleit aside) but the yeasts appear to be quite prone to it. I guess the monks may ferment a bit lower than a lot of homebrewers, I'll check Brew Like a Monk before I do one. At the moment I'm thinking about a tripple and doing a split ferment, one with Duvel yeast and one with Chimay yeast.
 
The banana really eased off after a month of ageing, it left a fruity edge after that but wasn't a recognisable banana flavour. I was convinced i'd made an absolute stinker of a beer, but it turned out fantastic (see the strong belgian brown thread in brew days)

I think top fermenting with that kind of strong, fast acting yeast is going to produce high temperatures and if you're homebrewing and don't have the ability to control temperature very effectively you either accept it or choose a slower acting yeast.

As I said, the White Labs yeast only got up to 24c beside a radiator wrapped in a blanket. I've not drunk anything made with it yet but from about 2 weeks in secondary the banana was definitely in there, much less noticable.

Would love to get my hands on that rochefort yeast again, as it really gave me a great result.
 
Maybe leave it longer in secondary to allow those volatile smells to escape. I've had sone success with that using the Bavarian wheat yeast that throws off some really unpleasant smells that you don't want to trap in the bottle.
 
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