Saison #11 (#fml Saison) Recipe and Tasting

The #fml Saison was originally designed to be my entry in New Brew Thursday’s homebrew contest. My brewday ended up being a trainwreck, but to my great pleasure and surprise, the guys from NBT asked me to be on the show! I naturally had to drop out of the contest, but being a part of NBT is a pretty fair trade-off, I’d say.

One reason I’m glad I had to drop out of the competition was the horror of the brewday I had. Well, maybe horror is a strong word, but it was one of the worst brewdays I’ve had in a long time, at least. The day was going fine (I even had the audacity to say “wow, this brewday is going so smoothly!”), until all of a sudden, one of the anti-siphon valves on our sprinkler system decided to burst. Naturally, because we don’t have a way to shut off the water to the sprinkler system without shutting off the water to the house, this happened right as it was time to start chilling my wort. This was intended to be a hop-forward saison, so with the big charge of hops at the end of the boil sitting hot for as long as it did (It was about an hour and a half before I could get my water back on), my IBUs ended up being closer to 70-80 instead of the desired 50. Also, the hop aromatics were likely seriously hampered.

Twitter users now know why this batch was titled #fml.

I think this is a solid recipe, and the beer was drinkable in the end. I think a little tweaking and a better brewday could produce something really tasty.

2011-023 Saison #11 (#fml Saison)

Brewed: 06/09/11

Racked to secondary: n/a

Kegged/Bottled: 06/16/11

Ready: 06/20/11

Batch Info

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Batch Size: 5 Gallons

Extraction Efficiency: 78%

OG: 1.067

FG: 1.006

IBU: ~70-80

SRM: 5.5

Boil Length: 90 minutes (~90 minute hot whirlpool

Grain Bill

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Organic German Pilsner: 9lb (75%)

Organic German Munich Malt: 1lb         8oz (12.5%)

Organic German Carahell: 8oz (4.2%)

Organic Turbinado Sugar: 1lb (8.3%)

Hop Bill

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NZ Rakau (12.7%AA): 14g @ 90 minutes

NZ Rakau (12.7%AA): 14g @ 30 minutes

NZ Rakau (12.7%AA): 14g @ 15 minutes

NZ Rakau (12.7%AA): 56g @ 0 minutes

Other

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Irish Moss: 1 tsp @ 15 minutes

Servomyces: 1 gelcap @ 15 minutes

Water

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Carbon Filtered San Bernardino Ground Water

Yeast

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Wyeast 3711 French Saison

Mash Schedule

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Sacch Rest: 152F for 60 minutes

Fly Sparge

Fermentation Schedule

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Pitch @ 75F, freerise for 7 days

Carbonation

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Slow Carb: 30psi for ~3 days

Notes

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1. Water to the house being off changed the 15 minute whirlpool to a 90 minute whirlpool.

2. First time using the hi-pressure slow carb method.

Tasting

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Appearance: Orange. Fluffy white head leaves some nice sticky lacing.

Aroma: Spicy and floral. Some malt breadyness. Some wine-like fruitiness in the back, if you look for it. A dash of citrus peel.

Taste: Much fruitier than the nose, almost tropical. Citrus peel, herbs (basil?) spice and a touch of heat.

Mouthfeel: Bone dry, well carbonated. Too bitter, for sure. The bitterness bites hard and lingers. Not too much to make it undrinkable, but much more than desired.

Thoughts: The bitterness is an obvious flaw, as is the lack of hop nose I was after. All in all, a solid recipe diminished by a train wreck brewday.