Decided best way to test new brewery kit was to do a brew with it
The background to the kit and purchase from Aleman is here the brew shed build is here (while my old stuff is for sale - PM me if interested!) Not a full outing - not yet confident enough of joints and leak proofing and processes to pump hot wort around but hot water seemed a good idea so set it all up as a tiered gravity feed job by bringing metal shelving out of cellar (a right PITA) and setting it up like this:
The idea:
This one has been a long time planned - one of my top beers of last year was The Mumbler's Saison which used yeast we recultured form a moinette saison dupont I brought back from Bruges at Easter. I REALLY fell for Saisons on that Belbium trip though it was a little too cold weather wise for them to truly hit their sweet spot. I think they are both an amazing style as one of the most summery and refreshing beers styles I;ve ever had and a style that is at heart individual and artisinal. THese are homebrews on a larger scale and force you to reconsider a lot of the 'rules'.
One of the highlights of The Mumbler's beer, and also FarmBrew's excellent spelt saison at the NCB competition was their lightness, high attenuation anc carbonation and spritzy wine-like character. Everything I read about Nelson Sauvin hops in their sauvignon blanc character made it cry out as a partnership for me: a sparkling fizzy almost white-wine-like beer with a white-wine-like-hop. Got someNalson Sauvin hops a wee while back when passing Leyland Homebrew (not been easy to find of late
The recipe:
AImed for 30litre brewlength (missed by a BIG margin) and 1.048 at the low end of the saison spectrum (missed that too by a good way) with a balanced bittterness of around 30IBUs giving a weighted balance of 0.53.
Fairly simple malt bill:
66.7% Weyermann Bohemian Pilsener (4.5kg)
20% Dingemaans Belgian Pale Malt (1.5kg)
13.3% Weyerman Munich 1 Malt (1kg)
Hopping schedule affected by high alpha values so first wort and late:
6g Nelson Sauvin 13.2%AAU - First Wort Hopped (10IBUs)
60g Nelson Sauvin 13.2% AAU - 10 minutes (22 IBUs)
6g (loose hops left in packet so lobbed in end of boil - 0IBUs
The yeast:
It's the yeast that makes this style more than anything else. The Mumbler and I as prev mentioned recultured the yeast from a bottle of Sasison DuPont I brough back. I'd still got a split section from the Mumbler from last summer in the fridge and made a small starter in a milk bottle - initially at room temp and then raised to Saison temps and stepped up in a demijohn and placed on a heated propogator tray:
which put it to the toasty fermentation temps this yeast likes - slightly on the cool side even
)
(spotted fairly quickly 
