Home Brew Forum

Saison seems to be all the rage these days. It's a great style, especially on a really hot summer's day. So in anticipation of the winter finally p*****g off, I decided to give it a shot. I actually brewed this on 31st March but hadn't got around to posting until now.

Recipe:
5kg Pilsner Malt
500g Wheat Malt
500g Munich Malt

Hops were all Kazbek (my local shop had no Saaz and this was reckoned to be a decent replacement)
40g for 20mins,
30g for 10mins,
30g at flameout,

Yeast: WLP566

I'm still having trouble hitting the right mash temp with my fancy new(ish) stainless mash tun, so instead of getting 65C I was a little under. I pre-warmed the tun, but I think the grain was colder than I thought, or something. Who knows? I had more success with my coolbox! Will have to compensate even further even future. In the end, after a pretty routine sparge and boil I got about 23L into the fermenter at an OG of roughly 1.063, which was more or less what I was shooting for.

I had my fermenting fridge set to 19C initially, and then after 3 days I went up one degree every two days. And now, after two weeks, the beer is at 1.006. It's a pale yellow, still pretty cloudy, and tastes very 'Belgian'. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting from this yeast, having never brewed with it before. I'm not convinced that what I've got really tastes like a saison, more like a Belgian Ale, but it still tastes pretty good to me. Gonna leave it a few more days to make sure it really has finished chomping the sugar and then it'll be into bottles.

Saisons are usually pretty lively but I'm worried about creating little beer bombs in my garage. Anyone out there got any suggestions for how much sugar to add when bottling? I normally add about 40-50g to a batch of this size (23L).

My favoured fermentation profile too. Don't worry about the taste at this early stage, it is going to change over the next month or so. I'd leave it for another week. Ideally, transfer to a fresh FV for bulk maturing, before bottling. Saisons are usually highly carbonated and packaged in stronger bottles, with thicker glass. You'll need to add more than 50g sugar. If I were using standard bottles, I'd use at least 120g.

Thanks for the advice. 120g!! Gulp!

monkeyboy wrote:Thanks for the advice. 120g!! Gulp!

I used nearer 150g for my last batch and I felt it was just right.

Matt

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These are meant to be spritzy beers, go through your favourite calculator and take it up to 3 volumes. Use strong bottles

I bottled this yesterday, using 120g. Event that's probably not enough, but I'll take a lack of fizz over exploding bottles! As usual there was about 3/4 left over so I got to try it out sitting in the sunshine. Even flat, it tastes really good. Excited about this one.