A saison recipe please.

[Oneiroi]

I brewed the following last November, drinking my way through the final half dozen bottles as the carbonation has increased a lot recently and I'm nervous. Recipe is for 15 L but I'll provide percentages too. The recipe was made using the advice and sample recipe in Farmhouse Ales. I brew in a grainfather so you'll have to adjust as necessary.

2.5 kg Lager Malt (77%)
500 g Munich II (15%)
250g Malted Wheat (8%)

Mashed at 64c for an hour then mashed out at 75c for 10 mins.

Boiled for 90 mins with the following hops.
20g East Kent Goldings (6% AA) at 90 mins (enough to give 28 IBU in total)
15 g EKG at 15 mins (1 g/L)
10g EKG at 0 min (0.67 g/L)
20g Saaz (3.4% AA) at 0 min (1.33 g/L)

Fermented with Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale, started at 19c for 3 days the raised by 1c per day to 24c and held until finished. Can't remember if I cold crashed, I normally do before bottling but I want to get my bock fermenting so might have skipped it this time. Bottled to 2.5 vol CO2.

Really fruity pineapple flavour when young and is now spicy with a slightly earthy funk to it. Also for the first few months the hops were fairly prominent as a floral and herbal note which worked well with the yeast, after 5 months they'd faded and it's now all about the yeast, still good but different.

In this batch I hit 79% efficiency which resulted in 1.054 OG, 1.007 FG, 6.2% abv, 28 IBU, 8 EBC.

I'll definitely brew this again and I'm tempted to use the hopping schedule in a pale ale with a neutral yeast to see if it's as tasty there too.

Good luck.

I used this as the base for my first Saison yesterday, thanks @Zephyr259. Subbed EKG/Saaz with Aramis and Brewers gold as that's what I had in and thought the earthy/herbal/floral notes would work. Fingers crossed!

 

[Zephyr259]

I used this as the base for my first Saison yesterday, thanks @Zephyr259. Subbed EKG/Saaz with Aramis and Brewers gold as that's what I had in and thought the earthy/herbal/floral notes would work. Fingers crossed!

Sweet, let me know how it turns out. What yeast did you use?

 

[Oneiroi]

Sweet, let me know how it turns out. What yeast did you use?

I thought I'd used the 3726 like you but got my numbers muddled, was actually the 3724 Belgian Saison. Heard it has a habit of getting stuck but hopefully if I manage the temp as suggested it should work. Will report back when tasted :)

 

[Zephyr259]

I thought I'd used the 3726 like you but got my numbers muddled, was actually the 3724 Belgian Saison. Heard it has a habit of getting stuck but hopefully if I manage the temp as suggested it should work. Will report back when tasted :)

Good luck, I'd advise you remove the airlock, experimental brewing did a test and the yeast seems to be insanely sensitive to pressure which makes it stall. Leave it without the airlock for the first week i think (details here) and it finishes with no issues.

 

[AdeDunn]

I did some interesting reading earlier about Saison yeast that gets stuck, in that quite a few professional brewers (as opposed to amateurs) reckon that it's nothing to do with pressure at all, but rather that it's all down to the presence of simple sugars. From what I read, that particular strain will chew through the simple sugars first quite happily and speedily, then when they're gone and it hits the more complex ones it'll develop a serious bout of lazyness and slow RIGHT down to the point of practically stopping, but that if you give it a considerable amount of time it gets there eventually. It's food for thought anyway, and if you read around a bit more, there is a LOT of variation on results from people trying open fermentation as to stalls, and also people not getting stalls when using airlocks (Brulosophy for example).

Personally, I've just been sticking with dry Saison yeasts, none of which stall, ever. lol Currently have a Grisette fermenting with BE-134, first time using this yeast. Started off like a rocket within hours of been pitched, but bizarrely has slowed down a bit already curiously...

 

[Sadfield]

I've read that also @AdeDunn, which makes sense as that is what all yeasts do to a degree, eat all the easy stuff first. Doubt it will be an issue with BE134 as is its a diastatic strain (as is Belle Saison and Mangrove Jacks French Saison) that will excrete glucoamylase that breaks down dextrins and starches.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[AdeDunn]

I've read that also @AdeDunn, which makes sense as that is what all yeasts do to a degree, eat all the easy stuff first. Doubt it will be an issue with BE134 as is its a diastatic strain (as is Belle Saison and Mangrove Jacks French Saison) that will excrete glucoamylase that breaks down dextrins and starches.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

Yeah, one of the places I read the sugars thing was a sort of press release type thing from Fermentis, they got a bunch of brewers to try BE134 and compare it with Dupont strain, and indeed it doesn't stick like Dupont strain no matter how many simple sugars you throw at it etc. I think in this case the slow down is a simple case of it running out of food, I've thrown a seriously vigorous yeast strain at a wort with an OG of only 1.032... lol The very reason I wanted to try this yeast though is because of the claims that it's more on the side of a "Belgian" strain (ie. Dupont a like) than another French strain like M29 and Belle Saison (both of which will reliably munch right down to 1.000 from about 1.060 given the right conditions, and plenty of time to do it in in my experience).

Even when the day comes when I finally get around to using liquid yeasts, having a nice handy diastatic strain DRY yeast to hand, that ISN'T French strain, to finish of stuck Saisons with would sure be handy... lol

 

[Horners]

I used BE 134 for my saison (subbing it in for the liquid yeast I had got with pre-assembled AG kit from Brew UK) . After a couple of weeks it was steady for a few days at 1.009 and I would have packaged but was busy with work. Left it a third week in primary and it finished up at 1.003. Alas no longer the hot day grafting on the veggie patch ale I was looking for but hopefully the 4 litres or so that made it into bottles will not blow up.