Brewday: Session Saison

Yesterday I brewed a saison, the final beer of three for an upcoming camp. I'm hoping that the low gravity and the high fermentation temperatures will get this baby done quickly so that it has time to carbonate in the bottles.

Now we wait. It hurts.

I'm a relative newcomer to saisons. The first one I had was at Fremont Brewing just over a year ago. It was memorable even among all the other great beers I had in the US. I loved the dry finish and the fruity and peppery characters that came with it. Since then I've also enjoyed the Sierra Nevada Ovila Saison and a number of others from the US, Belgium and Australia. They seem to be a beer geek favourite and I guess with good reason. It gives heaps of freedom to play with grist, mashing, hopping amounts and brett/funky bacteria.

With this one I was aiming for something pretty dry with a decent bitter bite to it. I started fermenting it at 23'C but will up that to 28 or 29'C over the next few days, I'm hoping the higher temperatures will help me get a bit more out of the WY3725 than I did last time. It'll weigh in somewhere between 4.5 and 5% ABV and should be perfect for those lovely Spring days we get in between the windy/wet ones.

The grist is pilsner malt (82%), rye malt (11%) and wheat malt (7%). Not shooting for anything spectacular with that, just light and hopefully with a little edge from the rye and wheat. I mashed at 65.5'C and was shooting for 1.043 but only got 1.040. So far for the 3 batches I've brewed in my urn I've hovered around the 70% efficiency mark, it's not exactly where I want it but at least it's relatively stable and I can build recipes around that. I haven't been doing a mashout in the urn yet and I reckon that'd help get my efficiency up a few points.

I added 26g of Aramis hops at the start of the boil, 30g Saaz @ 20 minutes and 30g Styrian Goldings at the end. It's far from a hop bomb but in a relatively little beer they should come across nicely.

Fermenter of saisony goodness

Camp de Brains Saison
OG: 1.043
FG (est): 1.005
IBU: 31
Batch size: 23L
Mash: 65.5'C for 60 minutes

Grist:
Pilsner malt (82%)
Rye malt (11%)
Wheat malt (7%)

Hops:
26g Aramis (8.2%aa) @ 60 min
30g Saaz (2.9%aa) @ 20 min
30g Styrian Goldings (5.4%aa) @ 0 min

Yeast: Wyeast 3725

I also bottled the IPA on Monday. I'd dry hopped it for 4 days with 40g each of Columbus, Amarillo and Simcoe and bottling it was a pleasure. The aromas were incredible. Tropical fruit punch, strawberry, coconut and lime. I'm really happy with it and can't wait to see how it drinks.