Saison Dunkel- A German Belgian

I don't drink Saison's very often, mainly because they're so damn expensive, but sometimes the expense is worth it. I had a Saison Dupont last night, and it just reminded me why I love the style so much. Peppery, spicy, and totally balanced. So good.

Today I brewed the second of two Saison's I will brew this year. I did a more classic version a few weeks ago, so today's was a darker brew. I read in Farmhouse Ales that some German's do some variations on the styel, so it seemed like a fun idea to do a darker incarnation that featured some German grains.

Saison Dunkel-

Fermentables-
German Munich Malt- 3 lbs
Belgian Pilsner Malt- 3 lbs
Vienna Malt- 2 lbs
Special B- 8 ounces
CaraFoam- 8 ounces
Sauer Malt- 4 ounces

Hops-
Fuggle- .75 oz- 60 minutes
Fuggle- 1.25 oz- 15 minutes

Yeast-
Yeast cake from Saison #1

Mash-
148/165- hot water infusion with a decoction mash out

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV
1.053/1.056

I always go back to Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing when I'm putting together a recipe lately. One of the things he talks about is squeezing as much color from your base malt as possible. I had originally planned on using a dark Munich malt instead of a light, but this beer was still noticeably darker than the first one. The Special B is a classic Belgian Dubbel ingredient, so it seemed like the right roasted Malt to use as my other main color adjustment. The yeast does most of the work on this beer, so there's a very small amount of hops in relation to the gravity, but I think this will be a tasty brew.

I was putting together the list of beers I want to make in the next few months, and I've got some really fun things coming up. I will be harvesting some hops here pretty soon, which will go into my first Harvest Ale. I am planning on a Cocoa Porter using some Scharfenberger Cocoa Nibs as a bittering agent. I am also really excited about doing a Scotch Ale, which will employ a small bit of smokey malt. Good times!

Saison #1

My dad has a way of describing jobs around the house by how many beers he needs to drink to get the job done. Cleaning the p-trap in the kitchen sink would be a one beer job. Building a garden box for my mom would probably be a two beer job. Farmers in Belgium 150 years ago felt the same way. Not having much farm work to do in the winter time, they brewed beer, a style called Saison. It was meant to be a low alcohol easy drinking beer to give to the farmhands to refresh them in the hard hot summers.

It is also probably my favorite style of beer to brew. Because it was brewed on every farm, every farmer had his own recipes, typically using whatever ingredients he had on his own farm. This made for some massive diversity, to the point where there is no real standard bearer beer for the style. Brewers know when they're drinking one, but no two are alike. Like the guy at the home brew shop said to the this weekend: "Get the right yeast, throw a bunch of crap in your mash tun, and let it rip!"

Saison #1

Fermentables-
Rahr Premium Pilsner- 8 lbs
Sauer Malt- 5 oz
CaraFoam- 5 oz
CaraVienne- 5 oz

Hops-
Wilammette- 1 oz- 60 minutes
French Streisspalt- 2 oz- 14 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast Saison 3724- 1000 ml yeast starter- pitched off the stir plate

Mash-
148 single infusion with a 1 gallon decoction mash out

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV
1.047/1.055/

Saison yeasts are typically very high attenuators, so my aim with the grain bill and mash is to make something that will finish dry. This is the first of a couple Saison's I'm going to do, so I decided this one should be light in color (more of a classic Saison), with small amounts of character malts. The next one will be darker, less classic, and more dependent on darker base and character malts. I wanted an unobtrusive bitterness to balance the grain, so I went with Willamette. The Streisspalt flavor charge is more of the sort of thing you would expect to find in a classic recipe, something a farmer in Wallonia might have growing in a far off corner of his farm. They were unlike any hops I've used before. They didn't have that greeny freshness you find with American hops, but more of a solid spice aroma coming off of them.

Makin' it up

My beers recently have had one common thread running through the recipe: the brew store didn't have have what I was looking for, so I made it up there in front of the sacks of grain, reusing the yeast, and whatever hops happen to be left over in the freezer. This week's beer was supposed to be a stout, but the brew store I visited in Lansing, Michigan had everything I needed and more except for roasted barley. I haven't been brewing a long time, but everything I've read about stout is that without roasted barley, you have something that would be called something other than stout.

I've done a lot of pale ales this summer, mostly because it's pretty easy to come up with a recipe on the spot, but I feel like it's something I'm getting decent at. And again, of all I've read, beer nerds say that if you can't brew a good pale ale, you aren't yet brewing good beer. So, while standing there at the Red Salamander (again, good beer store, minus the roasted barley), I decided on another pale ale.

Pappy Pale Ale

Fermentables-
2 Row Pale Malt- 7 pounds
20L Crystal- 8 ounces
80L Crystal- 8 ounces
Roasted Barley- 8 ounces

Hops-
Nugget- .5 ounces- 60 minutes
Nugget- 1 ounce- 15 minutes
Nugget- .5 ounces- Knockout

Yeast-
Yeast Sludge from the previous two batches

Mash Schedule-
149/167- hot water infusions

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV
1.046/1042/1.010/4.2%

The highlight of this brew day was undoubtedly getting to brew with my dad. This is, after all LaVoy Boys Brewing, and this was the first opportunity that there have been multiple LaVoy's at a brewing session. In principal my dad was treating it as a chance to see a more experienced brewer brew, and I was treating it as a chance to show off a little, but really we both wanted to brew up some beer as father and son. It was miserably hot (90 in the shade, probably closer to 105 next to the burner), but it was probably my funnest brew session ever.

The beer itself: straight up pale ale. Two row. Two types of Crystal malt (because as Randy Mosher says: when one malt would be good, two would be better), and a decent amount of the leftover roasted barley. Nugget hops are pretty high alpha acid, so I think a subtle roastiness will give it a nice backbone.

I have no idea if my readings were accurate at all, as my dad pointed out that I took the sample with the crud from the yeast cake, so I was probably closer to the 1.046 that I had targeted than I thought.

Next up, I'm going to do a couple of Saisons, as I've been itching to brew one. I think I'll probably order a lot of my stuff online to be sure I can do what I want. Then will be the yearly sour beers, one with fruit. Then some darker ales. I can't wait.

IPA Insanity!

Last year was marked by a distinct lack of hops in a lot of my beers. Partly, it was due to THE GREAT HOP SHORTAGE OF '08 (NO!), but I think it was mostly due to my being a fairly new brewer. I was loathe to make something undrinkable because I just plain hopped the shit out of it.

This year I'm much more comfortable with my hopping rates, pairings, and also with how I'm using the malts to balance that. My first IPA this year was absolutely fantastic. I've given a few out to taste, and it's gotten some pretty rave reviews. Of all my beers, I would feel comfortable putting that one on a shelf in a store right now.

IPA 2

Fermentables-
Maris Otter- 9 lbs
Crystal 90- .125 lbs
Brown Malt- .125 lbs
Flaked Barley- 8 ounces

Hops-
Willammette- .5 oz- First Wort Hopped
Willammette- 1 oz- 60 minutes
Vanguard- 1.5 oz- 15 minutes
Vanguard- 1.5 oz- 5 minutes
Vanguard- 1 oz- Dry Hopped

Mash-
151/165- hot water infusions

Yeast-
Wyeast 1968 London ESB- yeast cake from the Come Hell or High Water Ale

Gravity- Target/Actual-/Final/ABV
1.055/1.055/1.014/5.38%

The grain bill in this one turned into another attempt to use up what specialty malts I had. I forgot to get some Crystal 60, and I used up all my Crystal 90, which turned out to be less than half of what I had planned on using. So, I pressed the Brown Malt into service. Roasty flavors in IPA's are not completely out of place, but I went with a really light hand on it. Maris Otter: what can I say? I would use it in every ale if I could. While my first IPA this year was a high alpha acid brew, this one used some pretty low versions, but with a very respectable 42ish IBU's. I'm hoping for more of a spicy hoppiness in this one, where the first one was more fruity. The London ESB yeast fermented last week's batch super quick, and the Chinook hops were right up front in that one, so I think this one will be really good.

I'm really hoping to get in a couple of Saison's before the weather turns cooler, although it hasn't been real hot in Chicago this summer. But I'm torn between that and maybe getting in one more fun late summer ale on this yeast cake before I do some darker ales in September and October. We will see.

Come Hell Or High Water Ale

My plan this weekend was to do a Saison. The warm weather is perfect for just letting a fermentation take off without worrying about how warm it gets. The trouble was that when I got to the brewing store Saturday afternoon, they didn't actually have a single ingredient that I had gone in there to purchase, the most devastating of which was the yeast. My Saisons last year were all done with regular Belgian Ale yeasts, but this year I really was looking to brew them with a true Saison yeast to see how they improved.

Faced with this crushing defeat, standing in front of the disappointingly empty racks shelves where grain usually sit (lots of specialty malts, but very little base malts), I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to brew on Sunday. I came up with the following recipe:

Officially: CHOHW Ale

Fermentables-
Muntons Mild Ale- 5 lbs
Maris Otter- 2 lbs
2 row pale- 1 lb
Victory Malt- 8 oz
Crystal 90- 4 oz
Black Patent- eh...oz. I used up whatever I had left. I think it was about .125 oz

Hops-
Chinook- .5 ounces- 60 minutes
Chinook- 1 oz- 15 minutes
Chinook- 1.125 oz- 1 minute

Yeast-
Wyeast 1968- London ESB

Mash
154/168- Hot water infusions

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV
1.049/1.050/1.015/4.59

The thing I'm most excited about with this beer is the yeast. Most of my regular American Ales I've done have been done with the same yeast strains (one from White Labs and one from Wyeast, but I think from the same brewery). I've never used this London ESB before, and while Chinook hops wouldn't normally be your first choice with this strain, I had some that needed to get used, and it seemed like a fun thing to do. It was also my first chance to try out hopping a pale ale with an eye toward super charging the hop flavors by doing most of the hop additions later in the boil. The grains were mostly chosen from what they still had at the store, and what I had left over in my pantry that needed to get used up (i.e., the single pound of regular 2 row pale malt, and all of the specialty grains).

I liked the way my Stonebridge Pale Ale turned out earlier this year with the higher mash temperature to make the beer seem bigger, so that definitely informed my mashing decisions. I plan on kegging this beer for use at a BBQ or party in our garden later this summer, so regular readers of my blog (all three of you) can start kissing up to me now if you want to be invited. Joking.

Tripel

And finally the tripel. If you've never had this style of beer, you are seriously missing out. In principle, it's a big refreshing beer. The Belgians are big on talking about digestibility in their beers. Which is to say, something you can sit down and eat with as opposed to something that would fill you up all on it's own. The tripel is sort of the culmination of that, as it's something you sort of NEED to eat a meal with. The style inherently contains a lot of sugar which makes it really high in alcohol. If you sit down after a long day in the garden with a few of these and no food, you can get yourself pretty drunk really fast.

But again, that's not really the point. Beer, while refreshing and fun on it's own, is best enjoyed with food. I continually see articles in Bon Appetit where people are mentioning beer more and more in food pairings. And there are some foods that just pair better with beer than with wine, so it makes sense that you would start to see this. According to Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery, it's a good style for game birds and gamy hams like prosciutto. I am psyched about having this beer with a nice big dagwood type ham sandwich in August on the picnic table.

On to the recipe!

Tripel-

Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner- 8 lbs
Vienna Malt- 2 lbs
Belgian Aromatic- 4 ounces
Carapils- 4 ounces
Clear Homemade Candi Sugar- 2 lbs- put in the boil at 45 minutes

Hops-
Kent Goldings- 4.6- 1 ounce- 60 minutes
Chinook- 13- .25 ounces- 13 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 1388- Belgian Strong Ale- yeast cake from Single and Dubbel batches

Mash-
149/167- hot water infusion with a decoction mashout

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV
1.069/1.064/1.006/7.61%

The grain bill of a tripel is geared toward being able to stand up to the large amount of sugar that's going into the beer. That sugar ferments completely, so you need good stuff on the front end to make sure it's got a bit of malt and body to hold up under all that alcohol. Good Pilsner and Vienna malts are perfect for this. The Vienna especially is going to leave a little something that the yeast can't convert. The Kent Golding hops as a bittering addition are a traditional tripel ingredient. The Chinook not so much. I was kind of inspired by Chris, my neighbor who brews for Three Floyds, after talking to him about my single to try some unconventional hop additions. I probably should have done a little more research about the hop pairing of Goldings and Chinook (in truth, I didn't do any research at all), but homebrewing is about experimentation, and the Chinook addition is a tiny one at 1/4 of an ounce, so I don't think it will impart too much harshness. I added the sugar during the boil. Some people have been advocating adding it to the secondary, but I kind of like the idea of getting a little character from what happens when the sugar is a part of the boil.

The gravity came out a little low. I think if there is one aspect to my brewing that I have not really been able to get a handle on yet, it would be evaporation rate. I was unaware of how much volume would be added from the two pounds of sugar syrup, along with the relatively imprecise measurements on the side of my kettle for volume (I basically took a metal file and marked the side as best I could for the 3 to 7 gallon marks). This can get really imprecise when you put multiple whole hop additions in the kettle, along with the immersion chiller and the hop screen. Definitely something I plan on working on. In the end, I collected 5.5 gallons of beer into the carboy, which made my gravity almost the same as with the dubbel. The good news is that there was an extra pound of sugar in there, so I should get the divergence I was looking for from the two beers.

Dubbel

The Belgian Dubbel is probably one of my favorite styles to drink, and to brew. It's got everything in it, although to be fair, probably not a hop head style. The malts are upfront, the Belgian yeast gets free reign to express itself, and there's the signature dark candi syrup to boost the alcohol and keep it light. Seriously. If you stuck me on a deserted island for the rest of my life, and the only beer I had access to was Chimay Red, I'd probably be cool with that.

Also: I really enjoy using Special B for some reason.

Fermentables-
Belgian Pale Malt- 7 lbs.
Munich Malt Dark- 2 lbs.
Special B- 12 oz.
Aromatic- 4 oz.
Homemade Candy Dark Candi Syrup- 1 lb.

Hops-
American Kent Goldings- 1 oz.- 60 minutes
Mount Hood- .875 oz.- 14 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale- yeast cake from the Belgian Pale Ale batch

Mash-
151/165- Hot water infusions

Gravity- Target/Actual/Final/ABV-
1.059/1.062/1.012/6.56%

There are a few departures from the previous versions I did. I changed the Vienna malt to Dark Munich which should give it a hint of roastiness along with a little extra color (my previous versions turned out orange as opposed to a deep brown that I had been shooting for). New hops, new yeast, but the best part was the sugar. Belgian candi sugar at a homebrew shop is tremendously expensive (something like $5 for a pound), and the candi syrup that they use in Belgium is even worse (more like $9). I've read up quite a bit about it, and every source seemed to say that these were basically cooked up versions of regular sugar that you can buy at the grocery store for a few bucks for a five pound bag. In Brew Like a Monk, Stan Hieronymus even talked to a brewer who had an analysis done by Archer Daniels Midland, and they told him it was regular sugar, so just buy sugar. So I cooked this one up myself. The result so far: I am never buying sugar at the homebrew store again. It took a little longer to cook up than I was expecting, but I got a nice dark color out without roasting it. All for less than a dollar.

A very successful brew day, and I'm very much looking forward to tasting this. My last one I did for Thanksgiving last year didn't have as much time in the bottle to condition, so I want to see what the yeast can do with a proper long storage period.