Critiquing a recipe

[Eccipoo]

I'm thinking of brewing up a saison next week and was wondering would anyone be kind enough to run their eye over it? I'm still in the early days of making recipes for allgrain.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dcalnan]

Sorachi ace only uses pilsner malt and dextrose, and I think they use a Belgian yeast for it. There's an "official" recipe from byo magazine online , I would use that as a starting point.

[Eccipoo]

The grist was from HBT and the guy got it from the head brewer of Brooklyn. Hop schedule and ibu's are more what I was wondering look ok.

From research it seems like saison recipes are a minefield. Anything from 20 ibu's to 35

Haven't brewed one before so I'm wondering has anyone else with some experience of them


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[garciaBernal]

I'd drop the crystal malt altogether and maybe sub in a little wheat. Depending on mash temps too that beer is gonna be a lot stronger than suggested as Belle Saison will chew it up down to 1.002 unless you mash it high. For me Sorachi Ace hop is perfect for a saison too so go for it.

[phynes1]

Are you sure thats the correct color crystal - 60l? That combined with the pale malt, you're going to finish too dark and sweet for that beer. Use something a lot lighter, or reduce the qty significantly. Also, you want to get some dextrose or table sugar in there to dry it out.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

You won't need simple sugar. Belle Saison doesn't need the help. If anything you might struggle to keep any body in it at all.

I have made a few Saisons and I would question any high L crystal additions.

For reference my next Saison is likely to be a 70:20:10 Pilsner:Vienna:wheat spread.

[Eccipoo]

Good to know guys, thanks for the tips. Exactly what I wanted to hear before starting it. I'm considering playing with this recipe for a while and try and get it to where I'd like it and hopefully it can turn into a regular.

Speaking of the yeast, should I be fermenting high(ish) to try and get some flavours off the yeast? 22-23?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[phynes1]

No prob. I've used that yeast before, I've always pitched at 17 and fermented at 19 flat, got plenty of yeasty goodness at that temp, but you could push it higher.

[Oh Crap]

Belle saison loves high temps...add yeast nutrient& ferment it up to 27/29 and you'll get a real saison character...it will go to work very fast then grind out the last point or two..should finish lower then 1.005

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Belle Saison is worth putting through a few brews. Take your time to get to know it, and don't complicate the other ingredients that may mask what the yeast is doing.

For instance you can pitch hot and ramp it up hotter, 24c up to 30c, or ferment cool and clean for an interesting take on a pale ale.

[Eccipoo]

I'd just like someone to go over something else on this recipe as I'm brewing tomorrow, and my water volumes seem way way off. It's saying I need 19l of mash water and 18l of sparge

Surely this is way way too much? I went over my equipment profile again and all seems fine. Am I missing something?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Eccipoo]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Eccipoo]

I'd lose 2.5l to deadspace, and around 7 to boil off. Surely I'm not losing nearly 5 to grain absorption


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Drum]

About 1L/Kg is normally assumed for grain absorbtion, at least I read that somewhere and it seems about right on my set up. You've got 6.5 Kg of grain in there so I would expect even a bit more than 5L loss. You could drain the first runnings and see what volume you get, then adust your sparge volume from there. There is very little/no loss to absorbtion while sparging

[Eccipoo]

So I'm nearly finishing off my brew, and recorded some notes to look back on. My mash and sparge volumes were spot on before starting the brew when I was measuring it out. However I collected the required boil size....and still had about 2.75 litres of wort left over in the tun. Which wasn't dead space wort.

I mashed at 64 instead of 65, and got 1.062 instead of 1.069. Am I right in thinking the extra degree would've gave me my target gravity?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk