Saison - split batch yeast test

Saison - split batch yeast test
brewed on:  4/29/13
OG: 1.051
IBUs: 32
SRM:  4
mash temp: 150F
 
6 gallon batch
90 minute boil
60% efficiency assumed

malt:
10 lbs Belgian pils
3 lbs German wheat
8 oz acidulated malt

hops:
2 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 60 minutes
1.5 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 15 minutes
0.5 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 5 minutes
1 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - flameout
1 oz Sterling @ 7.9% - flameout

yeast:
split batch:
WY 3711 French Saison - 3 gallons
Belle Saison dry yeast - 3 gallons

fermented at 60F

Saison for Beer Fests

I recently volunteered to brew up a keg of saison for the upcoming Kenosha Beer & Cheese Fest going on next month, as well as a keg for the Milwaukee Firkin a few months later. I figured I might as well get it all out of the way now and just brewed up a 10 gallon batch. I stuck with my base recipe for this one. With Spring in the near future, I'll be back to brewing more saison variations this year soon enough though! This was a good kick off. I've gotta say it's really nice having a few hundred lbs of grain on hand, and 9 lbs of hops! The only thing I had to pick up for this batch was yeast! I don't have a lot to say about this one. It went smoothly and I cooked some good Thai papaya salad while mashing & boiling. The only changes I made from past batches was that I ran out of Franco-Belgian pils malt after the first 4.5 lbs, so I made up the difference in MFB Pale malt. Also, I had a spare ounce of Crystal hop pellets in the freezer, so I added those at flameout. I was shooting for 11 gallons, but boiled down a tad too far and ended up with 10. Not a big deal. My normal OG for this recipe is below the minimum BJCP guideline, not that I follow those for everything. There was definitely room for higher gravity though. The IBUs were toward the low-middle range. They are still within the suggested range.

In other news, my pomegranate mead got the thumbs up from Annie today and will be bottled soon! 


Saaz Saison

brewed on: 3/6/2011
expected OG: 1.044

Expected IBUs: 32 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
10 gallon batch
90 minute boil

mash:
12 lbs Belgian Pils (subbed Belgian Pale malt for 7.5#)
3.5 lbs German wheat malt
8 oz acidulated malt


Hops:
2oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 60 minutes

2 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 15 minutes
3 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - flameout
1 oz Crystal - flameout

Yeast:
3711 French Saison - 1 pack per 5 gallon bucket

3/28/11 - OG 1.002. Dry hopped each 5 gallon batch with 1 oz Crystal (3.2%) whole leaf.

Wine Yeast Experiment

Awhile back I listened to a Sunday Session podcast with Shea Comfort (from 11-23-08.)If anyone reading this hasn't listened to it I *highly* recommend it! They cover two different topics, both of which are quite helpful. The first deals with using wine yeast in beer.

Most wine yeast is incapable of digesting maltotriose which is one of the complex sugar chains present in malt. Since there's no malt in wine/mead/cider, this normally isn't an issue. Comfort talked about an enzyme called Convertase AG-300 which, when added to the fermenter in very small amounts, breaks up all the complex sugar chains into simple sugars that are easily fermentable. This will completely dry a beer out though unless a tiny, tiny, tiny amount were added.

Wine yeasts are interesting creatures to use in beer fermentation because they can impart some great fruit flavors and big mouthfeel (even in drier beers, since it isn't coming from residual sugar like most homebrewers are used to) to the final product. Ale and wine yeast strains are all members of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, as opposed to Saccharomyces Pastorionus (lager yeast) and Brettanomyces strains. Some Sacch C. strains are killer, some are neutral, and some are susceptible. The way this breaks down is that killer strains secrete compounds which will completely kill off a susceptible strain within about 12 hours. However, they will not affect neutral strains. Neutral strains and susceptible strains will coexist fine. Pretty much all standard ale strains are susceptible.

The problem in using wine and ale strains in the same batch becomes that the wine yeast will kill off the ale strain, but won't be able to digest the maltotriose, thus the need for AG-300 enzyme to break down the maltotriose into simple sugars. Other approaches include adding the wine strain later in fermentation, after you've gotten what you want from the ale strain, or blending from a split batch using 2 or more different strains of yeast.


They discussed several different wine strains on which I took notes. White wine yeasts tend to impart either apple/pear, or tropical/citrus flavors. Red wine yeasts tend to impart cherry or berry flavors. I will outline some of the notes on specific strains here:

71-B
Susceptible, white, general fruit salad

1118
Killer, white, champagne yeast, relatively neutral flavor, general background winey (fruit/grape, not alcohol) Useful for Belgians, etc. Good for bottle conditioning a finished beer due to its strength.

K1b-1116
Killer, white, peach and stone fruit flavors

GRE
Killer, red, fresh berry. (Comfort suggested Stout, Porter, Kriek, Lambic as possible uses)

BM45
Killer, red, cherry, big mouthfeel (won't get broken down as it dries out). Comfort suggested 1/3 this yeast, 2/3 ale yeast in split batch. Cold crash a lot and re-yeast to bottle.

L22-26
Killer, red, berrylike flavor
-------
Convertase AG-300
suggested dosage of .08-.28ml/gallon
-------

I ordered some Convertase AG-300 to play around with and brewed a batch as an experiment. I decided to do a split batch and ferment part with WY3711 French Saison strain. (I had several packs of this in the fridge, and I really like it. I chose it for this simply because it was onhand and I was hoping the spiciness would complement the fruitiness of the wine yeast.) I opted for BM-45 for the rest to see how much cherry flavor and mouthfeel it produces.

I stuck with an extremely simple grist since this was an experimetn, adding only a small amount of Crystal malt to an otherwise all base malt bill.


Wine Yeast Experiment I

brewed on: 4/30/10
expected OG: 1.044
Expected IBUs: 31
mash temp: 152F

mash:
8 lb Maris Otter
1 lb Crystal 40L malt

Hops:
2 oz Willamette @ 4% - 60 minutes
0.6 oz Kent Golding @ 4.8% - 15 minutes

Yeasts:

1.5-2 gallons - BM45 Brunello
4 gallons - WY3711 French Saison yeast


The BM45 batch finished very early after just a couple days and I added .25ml of Convertase. Within 12 hours the fermentation picked back up again for several more days!

6/13 - The 3711 batch finished at 0.002, not unexpectedly as this yeast is a monster. The BM45 (w/ Convertase) batch completely dried out to 0.000! I have to admit I was disappointed in the lack of overwhelming cherry flavor I was hoping for from this batch. However, as I sipped the sample I did begin to pick it up. However, being bone dry obscures it a little. I blended the 2 batches together in a secondary. While I'm not expecting anything amazing from this blend, I do think the spice and fruit will complement each other well still. I need to decide if I want to augment this somehow to add some residual sugar, or possibly brett and something for it to nibble on. We'll see when I taste the blend soon, given some time to actually blend together completely.

Summer Saaz Saison

I absolutely love the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast. I've brewed 2 beers with it now. Although both were takes on saisons, they were very different. The French Saison yeast worked great in both! The first was my Red Wheat Saison. (I'm convincing myself little by little that the local homebrew store gave me something other than red wheat, because the color was much darker than expected and the flavor was different too. Regardless, it turned out to be a nice "export strength" strong brown beer with nice spice character from the yeast.) After giving 3711 a try with great results, I ordered 3 more packs of it to try varying the recipe in various ways. (I really should get better at saving & re-using yeast, but that's a project for another day. By the end of summer I hope to be ready to start culturing yeasts from bottles more regularly and saving them. These will go hand in hand at that point.)

On 4/9 I brewed my second beer with this yeast. Although the Red Wheat Saison has been a big hit, I wanted to scale back the gravity significantly, lighten up the color, and brew a nice refreshing session beer. While weighting out my grain at Northern Brewer, I made a last minute decision to include a few ounces of acidulated malt to crisp the beer up a little more, give it an even more refreshing edge, and really make the spiciness of the wheat pop. The recipe turned out as follows:

Summer Saaz Saison

brewed on: 4/9/10
OG: 1.041 (I was quite happy with this, as I was shooting for 1.040. This makes a few brews in a rom mow where I've just about hit the OG right on the money. That means I've finally gotten my all-grain system dialed in.
Expected IBUs: 29
mash temp: 149F (I undershot this by a bit and ended up pulling off a pan full of the mash, bringing it to a boil and adding it back. This hit the target temp right on.)

mash:
6 lbs. Belgian Pilsen Malt
1 lbs 12oz. US White Wheat
4 oz. Acidulated Malt
(mashed for 2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes)

Hops:
1.5 oz. Saaz @ 3.9% - 60 minutes
1 oz. Saaz @ 3.9% - 15 minutes
1.5 oz. Saaz @ 3.9% - Flameout
.5 oz. Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 3.5% - Flameout
(I intended this to be an all Saaz beer, but the .5 oz of Hallertauer was sitting in the freezer from a recent brew, so I added that in as well.)

Dry Hops:
1 oz. Saaz @ 3.9%


Yeast:
Wyeast 3711 French Saison

Fermented at 66-68F.

4/17 SG @ 1.003. Racked to secondary, added dry hops, and moved to basement (62F).


I'm tempted to try a similar recipe, but with significantly more acid malt to bring the tartness level up to a more "forward" level, perhaps slightly milder than a Berliner Weiss. We'll see. I've got a whole list of saison variations to try in my brewing notebook now!

Red Saison

After having to do a few extract batches, I finally fixed my mash tun yesterday. The stainless steel braid I was using was way too long and, when stirred, the mash grain would get underneath it and prop it way up on an angle so I'd get terrible efficiency. I got to go check out the new Northern Brewer store nearby in Milwaukee recently and picked up a false bottom. After being non-functional for the last week due to my eye injury I finally felt up to brewing. Although I was really hoping to do a strong dark batch to use with the 3rd generation of my Al B's Bugfarm3 yeast cake, I decided on something simpler (and cheaper) as a test run for the mash tun repairs.

What I decided on in the end was a pretty straightforward saison based on the "classic version" recipe in Farmhouse Ales. I did make a few tweaks though. For this one I used red wheat rather than a pale wheat malt for a darker color, they were out of Saaz at the local homebrew store so I replaced it with Spalt for a portion of the finishing hops, and I added 8oz of flaked barley to up the head retention. Once signs of primary fermentation are starting to die down I'll add 10oz of table sugar to help dry it out. Also, I've really been wanting to try the Wyeast French Saison yeast, so this was a great opportunity.

I started this ferment out at ambient temperature (high 60s F) in our house, but after I add the sugar I'll use the new heat belt I picked up to boost it up towards about 80F. Here's the recipe:

Red Saison

brewed on: 2/8/10
expected OG: 1.065 (actual was a few points lower)
IBUs: 24
mash temp: 152F

10 lbs Pilsener Malt
1.5 lbs Red Wheat Malt
8oz Flaked Barley

Hops:
1.2 Kent Golding @ 5% - 60 minutes
.6 Kent Golding @ 5% - 15 minutes
.4 Kent Golding - 2 minutes
.4 Styrian Golding - 2 minutes
.4 Spalt - 2 minutes

Yeast:
Wyeast French Saison

Sugar Addition:
10oz white table sugar - after primary fermentation dies down

Ferment at ambient temp (mid-60s F)
Raise temp to 80F with heat belt and add sugar

I used a bit of rice hulls in the mash due to the wheat and flaked barley, but still got a bit of a stuck sparge. It wasn't a big deal and was easily remedied. I was a bit lower than I'd hoped on my mash temp, so I boiled up another gallon of water and added it until I brought it up to 152. My biggest gripe with the new false bottom is that it allows more crap to get through from the grain bed. I'll have to try and do a better vorlauf next time and see how it goes.The efficiency was still a few points lower than I'd hoped, but was much better than the ss braid I was using before. I actually took my OG reading while the wort was still pretty hot then adjusted for the temperature, so for all I know I actually hit my OG right on and just didn't adjust right. Note to self: Next time cool it off then check again to see how close the math on the temp correction is.

2/16 - Boiled 10 oz white table sugar in 2.5 c. water. Added to primary bucket & applied heat belt.

2/21 - SG @ 1.001! The sugar character/dryness & wheat both come through nicely, but not overdone. Yeast character is great! I'm super impressed with the Wyeast French Saison strain! Bitterness seems a little high, but this is a hydrometer sample, so that should mellow a bit with some bottle conditioning.
- Moving to basement (60-62F) for a few days until ready to bottle.
-2/27 - FG 1.001. Bottled w/ 5 oz corn sugar. Bitterness still seems a tad high, but not unpleasantly so.
-3/11 - Bottles are *super* carbed at room temp. Tossed the entire 2 cases in the fridge to help bring the foaming down and hopefully avoid bottle bombs!