This past weekend I brewed my 4th all grain batch of the year, my 2nd in a row with a guest brewer. I've expressed interest in brewing a beer with my dad for a while now, so as soon as I knew he would be in town for the weekend, I asked him to come down a bit early and join me for a brew day.
Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a recipe for a Saison inspired by where I grew up. I asked my fellow Huron County current and ex residents for aromas and flavours that reminded them of the area. The overwhelming response was manure of all kinds (pig, turkey, cow, etc.), but hay, fresh cut grass and honey were also mentioned. Now I won't be including any sort of manure in the recipe (not even an extreme brewer like Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head would consider that), but with the French Saison yeast I'm using, there should be earthy, farmhouse aromas. I'll be using hay from local Huron Country farmers Barry and Melanie Miller, who own Miller's Country Store on highway 83 in Exeter. I'll also be using honey from the Ferguson Apiaries, which is located between Hensall and Zurich.
Saison is a style of beer that originates from the French speaking part of Belgium, brewed in the autumn and winter months for farm workers to cool off during the summer. Since the agricultural industry is such a big part of Huron County's identity, a Saison seems like the perfect style of beer. I'd like the beer to be light in colour and finish very dry, so my grain bill is 80% bohemian pilsner malt, 10% wheat walt and 10% honey. The wheat malt will provide a fuller mouthfeel and enhance the beer's head retention. Honey is highly fermentable, so adding it will raise the alcoholic content of beer while lightening the body.
When my dad arrived Saturday morning, I brewed a pot of coffee, turned on some tunes and put him to work sanitizing all of the equipment. I've never seen someone be so careful cleaning and sanitizing, which was definitely welcomed as I can get a bit careless. While he prepared all of the equipment for brew day, I milled all of the grain so that we could begin the mash.
I decided to use the hay for two reasons, first to impart some grassy aromas and flavours, and second was to use it as a secondary filter. I've been having issues with my manifold clogging during the lautering process, so I thought if I add a hay bed at the base of my mash tun, it would prevent that from occurring. Having the hay as the last thing the wort touches before heading to the kettle reminds me of what Sam Calagione did during the 'Chicha' episode of the TV show Brew Masters. If you're interested in the beer industry, I'd recommend checking out that show.
We decided to mash at a lower temperature than I have been since the goal was to create a clean finishing beer with higher attenuation and less body overall. When you mash at a lower temperature (131-150F) you activate the beta amylase enzyme group. The beta amylase enzyme group will produce maltose, which is the main sugar fermented in beer. If we primarily produce maltose sugar, most of it will be fermented out, resulting in a lower final gravity (FG) and thus a lighter bodied, dryer finish. When you mash at a lower temperature, it takes longer to convert all of the sugars, so we mashed for 90 minutes. We went with a strike temperature of 159F, with 1.6 quarts/lbs of grain. The temperature settled at 153F and dropped to 146F by the end, for an average of 149.5F over the course of the 90 minute mash. Then we separated the wort from the grains, which went faster than it ever has, thanks to the hay filter. As a result we had to play the waiting game as the sparge water needed to heat up to the target temperature of 168F. We then added the rest of the sparge water, and filtered through a total of 6 gallons of wort. We were targeting 6.5 gallons pre-boil, as 1 gallon will evaporate during the boil and ~0.5 gallons will be absorbed by the hops during the boil and the trub in the fermenter. To get to 6.5 gallons we just added 0.5 gallons of water to the wort pre-boil.
Once the wort got to a rolling boil, we added the Czech Saaz hops with 60 minutes left in the boil. I chose Saaz as the bittering hop as it has a 3.0% Alpha Acid rating, so it shouldn't be overpowering, but it may also add mild herb, earthy and spicy aromas. With 15 minutes left in the boil, we added the Sterling hops. Sterling hops are an American hop similar to Saaz, but are a bit higher in AA and impart herbal, spicy and floral aromas. At burnout we added the honey and immediately transferred the wort to an ice bath. I chose to add the honey at burnout to reduce the time that the aroma and flavour of the honey could be boiled out. If the honey was added earlier in the boil, it would likely be boiled out into pure sugar and would merely increase the alcohol level and thin out the body. If the honey was added during fermentation, there would be a risk of contamination if it was not pasteurized first.
After the wort cooled, we strained it into the plastic fermenter and measured the original gravity. We ended up with an original gravity of 1.052, slightly lower than the 1.054 we were targeting. Depending on where the final gravity ends up, the ABV should be somewhere between 5.0 - 5.5%, which will be quite thirst quenching on a hot summer day.
I can't speak for the both of us, but I had a great time brewing with my dad and hopefully it won't be the last time. It was an afternoon filled with learning (for both of us), music, beer and BBQ'n and we got as close to the targeted numbers in my recipe as I could have expected.
Thanks for reading!
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