Honey is remarkable. The 12 oz/375 g in this saison contained the sugar paid-out by hundreds of thousands of flowers that coevolved with honeybees, incentivizing them to transport their genetic material. Those bees flew a combined distance in the tens of thousands of miles. Then, by flapping their wings to speed evaporation of the nectar, they concentrated the flowers' aromatics and sugars, preserving both for years (or potentially millennia). Boiling the honey drives off the aromatics, so with all of the effort it took to collect and concentrate them I save honey for cold-side additions!
I’ve brewed with more than a dozen honey varieties over the years (including sourwood, gallberry, raspberry, blueberry, acacia, buckwheat, orange blossom, rosemary, meadowfoam, heather, and wildflower). "Fruit" honey is the easiest place to start as they are the most approachable (bright, fruity, and sweet). However, it often takes 20-30% of the sugar in the batch to really contribute their unique character. Over the last year I’ve become fond of honey gathered from herbs. These have more punch (not surprising given that herbs are prized for their intense aromas). Honey Bunches of Saison (rosemary honey) was delicious and distinct with less than 10% of the fermentables from the honey, but it was a little one dimensional with the honey overwhelming the late-boil hops.
I’d been tipped-off to look for thyme honey while I was visiting New Zealand. We didn’t see any at the honey stands we stopped at along the road from Christchurch to Nelson (although we did buy a jar of wildflower). Luckily while I was brewing at Marchfest in Nelson, Audrey visited the local farmer’s market and bought 500 g. I though some Nelson Sauvin dry-hopping would be a good fruity-counterpoint to the bold herbal character of the honey, and really make this a Nelson Saison. I opted for Chinook and Nugget for a cheapskate route to beta-citronellol as in my biotransformation NEIPA. I considered adding a bottle of Nelson Sauvignon blanc too (ala my Nu Zuland recipe), but when I tasted the beer it already had enough flavor.
Fermentation was provided by my house saison blend, available once again for a limited release from Bootleg Biology today through October 30!
It's Nelson Thyme
Smell – That thyme honey is out of control! Glad I didn't add the whole jar, wish I’d gone even lower. Herbal, woodsy, and waxy. Just a hint of that earthiness I associate with buckwheat honey. There is a faint citrusy-hoppiness, but the classic white-wine Nelson is mostly obscured.
Appearance – Radiant yellow body. Cloudy without being murky. Fantastically airy yet solid foam sitting on top. Beautiful.
Taste – Flavor is brighter than the nose, big citrus (lemon mostly) with a touch of crisp tartness. Honey is still there, but seems more balanced than the aroma. Still strong herbal, although not explicitly thyme. White wine in the finish. Mellow, but present hop bitterness. Malt is restrained. Yeast is buried under the honey and hops. Hint of classic leathery Brett funk in the finish. Lingering retronasal-olfactory is fantastic blend of yeast and honey and hops.
Mouthfeel – Light and crisp, solid carbonation. No harshness or tannins.
Drinkability & Notes – The honey has actually faded and integrated over the last few weeks. More balanced and citrusy. Happy with the combination of hot-side hops as a citrusy base, disappointed with the contribution of four ounces of Nelson Sauvin between the fermentor and keg. Changes for Next Time – Down to 8 oz thyme honey. Could up the Nelson Sauvin, or swap it for something less precious.
Recipe
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
SRM: 3.0
IBU: 30.1
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.004
ABV: 7.2%
Final pH: 4.16
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Boil Time: 60 mins
Hops
-------
2.00 oz Chinook (Pellets, 13.00% AA) @ Steep/Whirlpool
2.00 oz Nugget (Pellets, 13.00% AA) @ Steep/Whirlpool
2.00 oz Nelson Sauvin (Pellets, 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop Day 5
2.00 oz Nelson Sauvin (Pellets, 12.00% AA) @ Keg Hop
Water
-------
3.00 g Calcium Chloride
2.00 tsp Lactic Acid
2.25 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)
Mash pH initially 5.50 at mash temp with .5 tsp. 5.38... 5.27... 5.12 (~5.37 at room temp). .5 tsp Lactic mixed in with cold sparge water. Collected 7.5 gallons at 1.044.
Added hops at flame-out after chilling the 7.5 gallons of wort remaining to 185F. Recirculated for 30 minutes before running off the saison portion. 1.054. Chilled to 82F and pitched the House culture (9 month old harvest that had been in the fridge, gushed a little 4 hours with first runnings to get going). Left at 78F ambient to ferment. Good activity by the next morning. Ambient stayed between 77-79F for primary.
8/30/17 Fermentation appeared finished. Added 12 oz of "Pure Nelson" Thyme Honey to primary on the saison (effective OG ~1.059). Warmed in a water bath and then the microwave until dissolved.
8/31/17 Dry hopped with 2 oz of Nelson, loose.
9/10/17 Kegged the Nelson half with 3 oz of table sugar and 2 oz of keg hops.
I've already heard from homebrewers who have fermented batches with Bootleg Biology Mad Fermentationist Saison Blend. A few have reported more acidity than I'm accustomed to achieving with my house culture. It was surprising then when my most recent batch of saison became rather tart despite the calculated 70 IBUs of flame-out hops. I suspect on a homebrew scale the formula used by Beersmith overestimates the bittering contribution of whirlpool additions, but I'm surprised that the Lactobacillus was able to fight though even if it is just 35 IBUs. Adapting perhaps as I keep pitching it into well-hopped beers? Last year for Homebrew Con I brewed a somewhat similar hoppy saison that only dropped to a pH of 3.87 compared to 3.75 for this batch.
Honey is usually a rather delicate flavor. I went above 30% by extract for a split batch of sour beer with five varietal honeys, and none of them were boisterous. I was surprised how much character I got form only 7% Spanish rosemary honey. Audrey and I were in Savannah in the fall and stopped by Savannah Bee Company. In addition to a dozen honeys for tasting they also had a mead bar and a variety of honey-infused cosmetics. The rosemary honey had a bright-herbal flavor and in typical homebrewer fashion I thought "I can ferment that." I added it after primary fermentation peaked to avoid any undue CO2 scrubbing.
I didn't realize this beer ended up over 8% ABV until doing the calculations with the honey added, and how much drier it ended up than its sister Queensland NE-Australian-IPA. S-04 only made it to 1.018, the house combo took it down .010 lower.
Honey Bunches of Saison
Smell – Honey (herbal, floral, not much beeswax) comes through well despite the comparatively small amount; quality over quantity. Alcohol as it warms, not surprising given the 8.1% ABV. Mild citrus, I assume from the yeast and its interaction with the Australian hops. Grain is subtle.
Appearance – Mild haze on the clover honey colored body. The dense, white head lasts a few minutes, remaining as a patchy covering.
Taste – The most acidic beer from my house culture so far, but still more tart than sour. Low bitterness despite the calculated IBUs. Honey is there again, bright and pleasant adding herbal notes that cut though the citrus of the hops. Mild cereal finish with lingering fruity sweetness. The yeast ends up a little buried, not much funk or spice apparent, only a mild earthiness.
Mouthfeel – Light body without being watery. Moderate carbonation, would have been nice bottle conditioned and a bit spritzier. Drinkability & Notes – If anything too drinkable for the amount of alcohol. It doesn’t have the depth I look for in a big saison but it also doesn’t have the heat. Falls in the Boulevard Tank 7 genre of, "oh I didn’t realize it was that strong."
Changes for Next Time – This one could have stood up to a small dry hop charge given the characterful honey. Barring that, I might actually pull back the honey to 8 oz to let the base beer breathe. A lower OG as well, or bottle conditioned to give the Brett more time to make it interesting.
Honey Bunches of Saison
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
SRM: 3.6
IBU: 69.2
OG: 1.064 (1.069 w/honey)
FG: 1.008
ABV: 8.1%
Final pH: 3.75
Brewhouse Efficiency: 74%
Boil Time: 60 Mins
Mashed with 3 gallons distilled, 4.5 gallons DC filtered, 8 g CaCl 5.5 g gypsum, 1 tsp of phosphoric acid. pH 5.44. Sparged with 1.5 gallons distilled. Hops are 2016 harvest.
Collected 7 gallons of 1.060 wort.
Chilled to 68F.
Pitched 1 L of House Saison culture. It was 3 months since harvesting, so I made a small starter with wort from this batch at the start of the boil. Left the saison at ~67F ambient to ferment.
3/15/17 Added 11 oz of rosemary honey from Savannah Bee Company.
4/8/17 Kegged with remaining 1 oz of honey and 2 oz of table sugar.
4/29/17 Chilled and connected to CO2.
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It is always easier to say “No.” Every year I get a few invites for international trips combining speaking, judging, and/or brewing. With only so many vacation days each year, I can't go everywhere I'm invited. I love talking to locals with shared interests (and the free flight and hotel doesn't hurt), but it means a few days spent being on rather than relaxing. Sometime though an event, place, or people are enough to turn my answer into "Yes." Nelson, New Zealand and the 2017 NZ Home-Brewers Conference was the most recent thanks to organizers Karl, Ed, and Mike!
Drinking in Christchurch
We left our house in Washington, DC on Thursday afternoon and after three flights and a total of 24 hours in transit we arrived in Christchurch on Saturday afternoon. The city was hit by an Earthquake in 2011 that killed 183 people and is still knocking down damaged buildings. We were surprised how quiet it was on the weekend, I guess when the area around it is so beautiful, why live downtown?
Our first stop between the airport and our AirBnB was Pomeroy's Pub for two sampler trays (one of theirs and one of other local beers). It set the tone for much of the beer on the South Island, lots of British-inspired, with some American craft beer leanings, and the foundation for emerging local trends. The next day we met with the Chch Homebrew Association at Volstead Trading Company (excellent beer bar) and then onto dinner at Twisted Hop Pub (a local brew pub) with a few of them. Both breweries we visited in Chrischurch had some excellent house beers (Pomeroy's English Mild and Twisted Hop Twisted Ankle) and some I'd rather forget... from their guest taps with overdone adjuncts.
We also stopped by FreshChoice for bottled beers to sustain us on the trip around the country. Despite being hyped in America, New Zealand hops aren’t especially played up. Almost all of the local IPAs that highlighted a particular variety used American hops (e.g., Liberty Citra Double IPA). It was actually the emerging New Zealand Pilsners style that usually showcased Nelson, Motueka, and Riwaka! In general I was let down with the lack of local adjuncts used (certainly a handful of honey, wine grape, and manuka-smoked beers) especially from the likes of Garage Project. Freshness was a big issue too, many beers are given long shelf-life (12-18 months) and still a good number were out of code.
I bought honey at a self-serve roadside honey shack, and Audrey tracked down thyme honey for me at a farmer's market. Regrettably I didn't get to come home with hops (I'll have to order some in a few months when the new harvest is pellitized).
One interesting note is that bars are required to serve at least one low alcohol beer, which adds an incentive to brewers to brew them. The best of the ones we tried was White Mischief, a peach gose from Garage Project. The North Island, especially Wellington, is the center of the brewing industry, but there are still quite a few breweries in and around the cities on the South Island.
South Island Tourists
After a couple days we set out on a circuitous five day route to Nelson. We drove about three hours a day, but the scenery was beautiful and ever-changing. Down through Tekapo (a dark sky reserve) for stargazing at Mount John University Observatory, by Lake Wanaka (with a stop at Rippon Vineyards for beautiful scenery and serious natural fermentations), and up the West Coast with hikes to Franz Joseph glacier and onto Fox glacier by helicopter. We walked along the coast at Gillespies Beach, where there was no shortage of flat rocks, and a calm inlet perfect for skipping.
Hop Harvest
Our first day in Nelson we went on a tour of the New Zealand's hop growing infrastructure. Along with 20 local homebrewers we were joined by the other Americans (BJCP President Gordon Strong and Brulosophy Captain Marshall Schott).
We essentially ran the steps that hops take in reverse order. Starting at NZ ("N-Zed") Hops. This is the cooperative processor owned by the hop farmers. The guide noted that a few more farms were coming online this year and they expect a substantial expansion in acreage over the next three years. This is the building where your Nelson, Mouteuka, and Riwaka (if you can get it) are pelletized and packed for distribution. Harvest was well underway (an average year) and the place smelled intensely resiny. I would have loved to see the pelletizer in action, but the highlight was the storage room, it was like something out of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Up until now they have only done larger packages in-house, but starting this year they will be packing 100 g and 1 kg packages on a new machine.
Next we were onto Mac Hops, the largest grower in New Zealand. That day they were harvesting Green Bullet (the hop, as we were told several times, is the signature of Steinlager). They grow a variety of hops to stretch the harvest season. The machinery was fascinating, and we could get a bit closer than I would have expected. They dry and bale the hops on site and send them to NZ Hops where they are tested for moisture before processing.
I took a few videos of the various stages going from bines to dried whole hops (sorry for a few vertical shots mixed in...). They are basically in order from the bines hanging moving to have their hops plucked off, through the machines that remove leaves, and finally to loading dried hops into the baler. We didn't get to see into the oast, so the drying process isn't recorded. They are selling this 50 acre farm (to a private equity group that Modern Times has signed a bunch of contracts with) and using the proceeds to purchase 100 acres of land to build a new farm.
We had lunch at The Moutere Inn (the oldest pubs in New Zealand) where I tried Townshend Trial Hop 2 an subtly hopped beer brewed with an experimental variety (later I'd hear it was one of the breeder's current favorites, more herbally-balanced than the big tropical bombs they are known for). Our final stop was at the New Zealand Hop Research Station. Our group started in their test brewhouse (for single-hop trial batches). Here promising hops are added to a simple standard base beer, something like a Pilsner fermented with US-05. They use a neutral bittering hop and load up the experimental hops at the end of the boil and in dry hopping. Regrettably they didn't serve us any samples! Dr. Ron Beatson gave us a tour of the field, has been the driving force behind their breeding and selection programs. We didn't get to see the Nelson Sauvin "mother" (the one that all are propagated from) but we did see a few of her daughters. He cracked a few jokes about selecting the Cascades (now called Taiheke) for their breeding program in the 1980s. While some of their hops are bred manually, others are in secret test sites around the country with several female plants and a single male to pollinate. He said the same thing I had heard about Riwaka, beautiful hop (my Riwaka Hefeweizen), terrible agronomic properties. Our last stop was a tour of their chemical analysis lab where we got to smell samples of hops and some concentrated oils they had steam distilled. The lab also handles fruit analysis, and it was blueberry season.
BrewMania The next night I was honored to be asked to judge at BrewMania. A bit less so when I realized all 100 homebrewers there were also judging. It is a really unique contest with less structured judging (and feedback) than the standard BJCP contest. To be eligible for the overall win each brewer is required to submit three beers. The 10 tables are each presented with four beers for each round with no stylistic consistency, and each judge gets three bottle caps to vote for their three favorite beers. The beer that receives the fewest votes is eliminated. If any of your three beers are eliminated, so are you!
For the final round of the night each table gets the complete flight from two remaining brewers head-to-head. This whittles the 20 remaining brewers down to 10. The goal is to showcase your range of brewing skill, so when picking between equally good flights the one with more variety (saison, Baltic porter, and coffee IPA) is preferred over limited range (APA, IPA, and DIPA). The next morning I really was honored to participate in the best of show where along with Gordon, Marshall, and a few local judges to select the top three brewers. The winner didn't quite have the variety we were looking for, all were pale fruit beers (rhubarb Berliner, apricot sour, and raspberry saison), but they were of a higher quality than any of the other entrants.
MarchFest
Saturday was another unique event, MarchFest: a beer and music festival at Founders Park where each of the 16 participating breweries releases a new beer at the festival. It included a few excellent hoppy beers (Eddyline Black IPA and Moa Riverside Recliner) considering their freshness. Rain didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd, although the full pint option for pours may have had something to do with that!
During the first few hours of the event I brewed a version of Nu Zuland Saison with Jamie McQuillan. He's a sour specialist, reigning NZ Homebrewer of the year (including the top beer with a 49 with his riff on my no-boil Berliner with plums), and as I found out the next day winner of BrewMania 2017! He's also in the process of opening a brewery (New Zealand is much less strict, so he'll be able to essentially sell homebrew at first).
It was my first time brewing on a Grainfather. Surprisingly compact, and a smooth brew day considering we were out of our element and people were coming up to ask questions. We did neglect to realize it had an automatic 60 minute boil shutoff timer which threw off our timing (not bad for the worst mistake the first time brewing on a new rig). Malt was mostly local Gladfield Pilsner, which was surprisingly toasty. Without a way to reseal the 100 g of Nelson Sauvin for late-fermentation dry hopping we opted for only two additions, hop-stand and brew day dry hop. We pitched Belle Saison along with the dregs from two bottles of each of our homebrew. Excited to hear how it turns out when they hold the tasting between our batch and the ones brewed by Gordon and Marshall!
New Zealand Home-Brewers Conference
My last full-day was spent talking and listening at NZHC. Nice to attend a homebrewing conference in English after Florianopolis, Brazil and Drammen, Norway (my Portuguese and Norwegian are not strong). I presented about the advantages homebrewers (BeerSmith podcast on the same topic) have over commercial brewers to the general session, and then about sour beers to a break-out (along with head brewers David Nicholls of Moa and Jason Bathgate of MacLeod). Good response, and glad that sours are taking hold! As several people mentioned, New Zealand is still a few years behind the US, but that gap is closing quickly!
It was nice to catch-up with my friend Sean Gugger, who took some time to come to Nelson in the midst of nine month working at Batch Brewing in Sydney (not to be confused with Bach Brewing in New Zealand). He met up with us at the after-party at The Free House where I had one of the best hoppy beers of the trip, Behemoth 6 Foot 5 from Andrew Childs who had sat on the Going Pro panel earlier in the day. Also had fun chatting with Annika Naschitzki of Tiamana, a passionate German brewer.
With our ten days spent we started the long trip home. With the International Date Line working in our favor we landed in San Francisco 8 hours before we took off from Auckland. As a weird side-note, being in the Southern Hemisphere for the vernal equinox meant that we'd been in all four seasons during a two week period: when we left DC it was winter and then arrived in New Zealand for the end of summer, by the time we left it was autumn and returned to spring.
These five sour beers were split from the same primary fermentor with Conan and East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale (recipe). When fermentation slowed, I divided the young beer into five one-gallon jugs each with a half pound of a different single-varietal honey. Once the gravity was stable I bottle conditioned with one ounce more of the same honey to trap some volatile aromatics (something I usually caution against). All told, the honey provided about 35% of the fermentables!
This wasn’t my first time adding honey to sour beer, but I wanted to play with a variety of new flavors in a bland-ish base beer to evaluate them!
Honey Sours: Five-Way
Appearance – Quintuplets: clear gold body, nice foam on the pour, but mediocre retention (see it as I poured left to right). Honey shouldn’t hurt head retention, but sugar without protein doesn’t help either.
Smell/Taste – Even at one third honey, the differences between the aromas are subtle. They have more alike than unalike. They each have a mild fruity aroma, light horsey-Brett funk, pleasant acidity, and restrained maltiness. Similarities are always a good sign for a split-batch, no major process issues!
Acacia: This was the oddball through most of the fermentor samples I’ve pulled (weird plastic/stable aromatics). It has calmed down, but the honey doesn’t add much. It is abrupt, changing course mid-palate from fruity to funk. However, it has some interesting white-wine and watermelon rind notes I don’t get from the rest.
Sourwood: Classic honey aroma, with some vinous notes behind it. Fresh, honey on your pancakes flavor. Not exactly what I’m looking for in a pale sour, but I drank it quicker than any of the others. Wonderful lingering floral note!
Gallberry: Subtle waxy aroma. The most herbal, a nice counter to the berry. The honey flavor is nicely integrated into the base sour. The most interesting of the posse, with subtleties that needed a pale canvas to showcase.
Raspberry: Young this had a big cotton-candy note, but that has mostly faded. It is still the fruitiest and suggests the most sweetness. Least funky, most acidic. The nose is almost acetic, but the flavor doesn’t bear a trace. An outlier, but then it always has been.
Blueberry: Light, fruity, berry but not distinctly blueberry. Balanced, pleasant, the maltiest, but not quite the right match for a pale sour. Would be ideal for a sour red!
Mouthfeel – Happy that they all seem to have fermented out and carbonated at similar rates. Could be spritzier, but I don’t mind it as is.
Drinkability & Notes – This is the sort of batch that I love to brew! One of my recent pushes has been to brew beers that embrace homebrewing. A large brewery couldn’t procure enough gallberry honey to brew a batch at a reasonable rate. As homebrewers we have the opportunity to produce beers on a scale that allows us to use ingredients that are impractical for even brewpubs because of availability or cost. I’ll be talking about this for one of my talks at the Norwegian Homebrewer Weekend (aka Hjemmebryggerhelgen 2016) later this month, I’ll also be talking to Brad Smith about it for his BeerSmith Podcast if you can’t make it to Drammen!
After six months, I’m pretty happy with my stout faucet and beer gas setup on the new kegerator. The only two exceptions are that the first tank of beer gas kicked before I served an entire keg; most likely that was the result of a regulator leak. I gave each of the fittings a turn and so far so good with the second tank. My other complaint is the dripping from the faucet, the small reservoir above the restrictor plate holds about a teaspoon of beer that slowly drips out over half an hour following each pour. Otherwise it pours a beautiful beer!
Appearance – Beautiful depleted-uranium dense mocha head. The black beer yields amber highlights around the edges. Clear when it is thin enough.
Smell – High-quality chocolate bar, fresh toasty graininess. A hint of Raisin Bran. Also a touch of vanilla/floral, which I’ll generously attribute to the honey. Not a loud aroma, mostly thanks to the nitro (low carbonation means fewer CO2 bubbles to carry volatiles up to your nose).
Taste – Smooth cocoa roast, toasty, malty. More semi-sweet than dark chocolate. I can talk myself into tasting a hint of vanilla, but the honey is mostly a letdown. A hint of charcoal in the finish. Low bitterness, with plenty of sweetness, but it isn’t nearly as sticky as the milk stout.
Mouthfeel – I really like the thistle glass for nitro (I bought this one from Cristal Blumenau during our Brazil trip). Rather than allow the foam to float up out of the way with each sip (like a pint glass) it funnels the foam towards your mouth. Getting a bit of the head with each sip really enhances the creamy impression. Faint residual carbonation, tastes like maybe 1.2-1.4 volumes. Drinkability & Notes – A nice stout, despite the July heat. The honey doesn’t come through as distinctly as I would have liked, but it adds depth to the chocolate. The raw honey itself wasn’t as punchy as the Meadowfoam honey that Ken Schramm passed around at NHC 2014, which is likely part of the problem. Next time I’d up the amount to two pounds, and try a different supplier.
One of the more fascinating talks I attended during National Homebrewers Conference 2014 in Grand Rapids wasn’t even about beer. Ken Schramm (author of the excellent Compleat Meadmaker, and founder of Schramm's Mead) talked passionately about bees, amino acids, and agriculture during "Really Understanding Honey." While he talked he passed around ten varietal honeys for us to taste with single-use straws. The range from a mild honey like blackberry to some of the weirder ones (e.g., leatherwood) was interesting. Others demonstrated how different a single varietal (like orange blossom) can be depending on what part of the world the bees collect nectar (milder California versus the more more acidic/juicy Florida).
The two that really stood out to me were meadowfoam (toasted marshmallows) and Mexican coffee blossom (hint of coffee-like roast). I knew I had to get my hands on one or both of these to add to a stout! Last month I finally got around to brewing with meadowfoam honey. The base beer was a relatively straight-forward oatmeal stout, with 10% home-toasted oats rather than a breadier base malt. If I really wanted to play-to s’mores, I could have added a bit of smoked malt, but I didn’t want the flavor of the honey to be lost.
As with other honey beers I've brewed, I added the concentrated nectar when primary fermentation was nearing completion (four days after pitching). This prevents destruction of the volatile aromatics by the heat of the boil, and scrubbing by the vigorous primary fermentation. For the first time I also saved a few ounces of honey to add directly to the keg for natural conditioning. I'm usually not an advocate for using priming sugar to add flavor, but the pressure should trap the volatiles, and I can a easily adjust the carbonation with CO2 once it goes on tap.
Grain/Sugar
---------------
59.2% - 15 lbs. Valley Malting Pale
8.9% - 2.25 lbs. Rahr Pale
10.3% - 2.63 lbs. Home-Toasted Oatmeal (25 min @ 340F)
9.9% - 2.50 lbs. Simpsons Roasted Barley
3.0% - 0.75 lbs. Briess Crystal 120L
3.0% - 0.75 lbs. Simpsons Extra Dark Crystal
5.9% - 1.50 lbs. Meadowfoam Honey
Hops
------
1.38 oz. Magnum (Whole, 12.00% AA) @ 70 min.
2.00 oz. Challenger (Whole, 6.10% AA) @ 10 min.
Extras
--------
1.00 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh Ale
Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington, DC
Mash Schedule
------------------
Sacch - 60 min @ 154F
Notes
-------
2/13/15 Made a 3.5 L starter with 1 vial of month old yeast. Crash chilled after 24 hours on the stir-plate.
2/16/15 Brewed with some guy
Oats toasted at 340F 25 min. until they smelled toasty (only minimal color pickup).
Measured 5.3 mash pH.
3 gallon cold sparge. Collected 13 gallons of 1.045 runnings. Adjusted hops down by 1% AA.
Chilled to 65F, shook to aerate, pitched 2 L of the starter. 24 hours at 65F ambient, then to 58F ambient.
2/19/15 Back to 65F ambient to finish.
2/20/15 12 oz of Winter Park meadowfoam honey and 1/2 gallon of water to my half.
3/8/15 Racked my half (FG 1.020) into a keg with about 3 oz of meadowfoam honey. Purged and sealed. Left in the mid-60s to condition. Extra beer went into a growler with a small amount of the honey.
7/15/15 Tasting notes. Happy with the overall character of the beer, but the flavor of the meadowfoam honey itself barely comes through. I'd up it next time or find a more characterful supplier.
If a beer recipe calls for "honey" without specifying a varietal, it might as well call for "malt" and "hops" with similar imprecision. The plants where colonies' bees collect nectar determines both the aromatic and sugar profiles of the honey they produce. In general the paler varieties (e.g., clover and alfalfa) have mild flavors, fruit blossom honeys (e.g., raspberry and orange blossom – which despite its name can come from any citrus) tend to possess more assertive aromatics reminiscent of the plant’s fruit, and darker honey (specifically buckwheat) is pungently reminiscent of old malt extract. Wildflower honey varies by location and season, so taste it to decide what type of beer it suits best.
While mead is the truest (and sometimes overwhelming) expression of fermented honey, beer and honey had a relationship millennia before bland honey wheat beers were invented. While honey is not a common addition to sour beers, there are a handful of terrific examples: Bullfrog Beekeeper, McKenzie Brew House's Irma Extra, Cambridge Brewing Honey Badger, and Hill Farmstead Ann. My orange-blossom honey infused Flower Sour was delicious, which makes me wonder why I waited five years to brew something similar again!
Do a favor for the 12 bees who worked their entire lives to produce each teaspoon of honey, add it as late in the brewing process as possible. Heat from the boil and the carbon dioxide from fermentation will scrub out the aromatics that make honey so much more interesting than high-fructose corn syrup. Honey demands greater care than other sugars because its floral notes are so volatile. At a minimum I wait until after primary fermentation. If saved until the beer has already been souring for several months, the honey will feed the dominant bacteria and Brettanomyces. Luckily, unlike fruit or hops, honey aroma does not fade quickly with age. Priming with honey traps the aromatics in the bottle, but the variable sugar content makes it a gamble.
For this batch I decided to go back to my "split-batch" experimental ways. I purchased small quantities of five interesting varietal honeys. Each one is solely flavored by the nectar collected by the bees (not by fruit or extracts added to a neutral honey): Indian Acacia (winey/hay), Raspberry (Lucky Charms), Blueberry (berry/malty), Gallberry (herbal/spicy), and Sourwood (waxy/floral - classic honey). After primary fermentation was complete I added eight ounces by weight of each honey to five 1 gallon jugs and evenly distributes the beer between them. It will be interesting to see how much my tasting notes of the finished beers recalls those for the unfermented honeys.
As much as I enjoy drawing inspiration from commercially brewed beers, and more recently working on commercial recipes, I'm trying to take advantageous of the things I can do as a homebrewer that are difficult or impossible on a larger scale. In this case that means using ingredients that either don't exist in large enough quantity or simply cost too much to make them economically feasible in commercial batches.
Hops
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0.50 oz. Mosaic (Pellet, 10.00% AA) @ 45 min.
Extras
--------
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
Yeast
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The Yeast Bay Vermont Ale
East Coast Yeast ECY02 Flemish Ale
Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Pale, Low Hop
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest - 45 min @ 156F
Notes
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Brewed 3/17/14
8 gallons Whole Foods Spring water. 2 g CaCl added to both mash and sparge.
Batch sparge, collected 7.25 gallons at 1.029.
Boiled down to ~5.5 gallons racked 5 gallons clear-ish to 6 gal BetterBottle. Chilled to 70 F. Pitched a half cup of Yeast Bay Vermont Ale harvested from Fortunate Islands #4, plus a 6 month old vial of ECY Flemish.
Shook to aerate, left at 65F to ferment.
4/13/14 Racked to five 1 gallon jugs with with 1/2 lb each Heavenly Organic Acacia, Fruitwood Orchards Raspberry, Fruitwood Orchards Blueberry, Winter Park Gallberry, and Winter Park Sourwood honey. Added a 1/2 cup of warm water to each to help the honey dissolve.
10/1/15 Bottled all five versions with 1 oz of the same honey they were brewed with. No extra yeast, we'll see if I regret that.
4/4/16 Tasting notes for all five. Gallberry was the most interesting, sourwood was the most honey-forward, and blueberry would shine in a darker beer,
For the third beer in our series of dark-funky-fall saisons, Alex and I created this earthy fig and buckwheat honey permeated batch late in 2010. The brown honey produced by bees collecting nectar from buckwheat smells like nothing so much as dark malt extract that has been left out too long, pungent. Overpowering on its own, we hoped that a small amount would add depth and complexity to the funk provided by the Brett. We also added a few grams of anise and cinnamon, our attempt at sub-threshold saison spicing.
Complex recipes are hard to learn from. Alex and I combined a bunch of malts, adjuncts, fruits, oak, spices, an expressive yeast, and it is terrific, but I am completely lost on where most of what I taste is coming from. There is definitely dark fruit, but is that the figs or the Special B? I think most of the funk is from the Brett, but I’m sure the buckwheat honey is boosting it. I like the beer, but it would be a hard recipe to refine.
Fantôme has been a big inspiration for this series of beers. Not any of their beers in particular, but rather the notion of making a seasonal beer, like their Hiver or Noel, that evolve from batch to batch. It is a lot more fun to have a general concept to brew towards, rather than trying to recreate the same thing each year. Hopefully Alex and I can keep up this project; it shouldn’t be too hard given all of the dried fruits and spices we have yet to experiment with. Last fall’s Batch #4 is still aging, although I had to rack my share off of the wine-soaked oak stave and dried Zante currants sooner than anticipated when, after just six weeks, the wood character was already becoming too evident.
Dark Fruit Saison III
Appearance – The meager off-white head puts up a good fight, holding on to the last sip. It sits atop a beer has a dark molasses color at the top, but turns transparent Newcastle brown near the bottom of the fluted glass.
Smell – The aroma is dark, port-like, with plenty of dried fruit (although not specifically figgy). There is some dusty Brett funk as well, backed up by some toasty malt (or is that buckwheat honey?). There is so much going on that the peppery yeast and spices get lost in the shuffle.
Taste – Fresh cherries or plums right off the bat, before transitioning into dark fruit in the finish. The acidity is soft and complementary, the saison yeast didn’t leave too much for the bugs. The flavor is dry, but it isn’t grating. The buckwheat honey has calmed down from its once potent position, although it is still there at least in the distinct barnyard finish.
Mouthfeel – I’m usually a fan of low-moderate carbonation, but this one could use a little more oomph. The body is medium-thin, about right for a dark-funky-Belgian.
Drinkability & Notes – I think each year our dark saisons have gotten a little bit better, although this one is probably closer to a funky dubbel. Still waiting to see how the most recent version turned out, but I have high hopes.
Our wine barrel solera is a week short of its first birthday (with a solid sourness and some woody complexities) so it seemed like a good time to start a second solera. What is a solera? Will Meyers, the brewer at CBC, wrote an excellent article for New Brewer about his multi-barrel solera project that gives the background and history of the technique better than I can.
Nathan and I had been looking to procure something different than the red wine and bourbon barrels that we already have beers aging in. Luckily, we were able to pick up a unique American oak barrel while we were in Pennsylvania visiting McKenzie's Brew House. The barrel had already lived a long/rough life by the time we got it. It was originally coopered and charred to be a bourbon barrel (I'm not sure which distillery since the name was painted over). Bourbon is legally required to be aged in first use barrels, so after it was emptied it was sold to Laird and Company to age apple brandy (which they do for a minimum of 7.5 years). Keystone Homebrew buys barrels in bulk from Laird's, so that is where the brewers at McKenzie's picked it up for ~$125 dollars.
Spirit barrel impart an intense flavor onto beers compared to wine barrels. I have been disappointed by some apple brandy barrel beers like Captain Lawrence's Golden Delicious, which came across as hot/boozy with too much barrel character for its light frame. On the other hand, I've tried some spectacular ones like Le Trou Du Diable La Buteuse Brassin Spécial, which is also based on a tripel (like Golden Delicious), but has a milder barrel character and some glorious funk. We wanted a sturdy base beer, so we opted for two sacks of pilsner, some Munich for bready malt character, and a bit of CaraMunich for aromatics (and some color). We aimed for a substantial 1.075 original gravity, and a piddly 13 IBUs. Hopefully the fact that McKenzie's had already aged a brown ale in this barrel will help to soften the booze character.
When we picked up the barrel we couldn't fill it immediately (holidays), I even failed to rinse it out. When I did get around to cleaning it a few weeks later the gallon of beer left in the bottom smelled intensely vinegary. Luckily a few rinses with cold water and a few days with 10 gallons of Star-San cleaned up the aroma completely.
Near the end of the brew day I noticed a large crack in one of the staves near the bottom of the barrel. We didn't think that we had caused it, but we couldn't be sure. Luckily we had 5 empty six-gallon fermenters to hold the first batch while we contemplated our options (finding a new barrel?). I applied some keg lube to the crack and put a few gallons of water into the barrel, it didn't leak so I added more every day until we trusted that the wood had swelled and could support 400+ lbs of beer. We emptied the sanitizer and filled it half way with the first weekend's brew. A few days later it was still holding, so we brewed/racked the second half of the wort in. I was still a bit nervous, so we placed some wood boards under the barrel to help take some weight off the stave.
After the second brew the barrel was about 5 gallons short of being filled, so after primary fermentation was completed we topped off with 5 lbs of honey dissolved in water. We haven't topped off our other barrels as evaporation and samples slowly drain them (and we probably won't here either), but we wanted to start it as full as possible to reduce the oxygen available to any acetic acid producing microbes still in the wood.
Hopefully next winter we'll be able to blend some of the two solera barrels together for a special cuvee. I did some updates on the solera aging spreadsheet I created last year if anyone is thinking of starting a batch of their own.
Hops
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4.00 oz. Willamette (Whole 4.50% AA) @ 60 min.
4.00 oz. Styrian Goldings (Pellet 4.75% AA) @ 70 min.
2.00 oz. Aged Willamette (Whole 1.00% AA) @ 50 min.
Extras
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2.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
Yeast
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White Labs WLP566 Belgian Saison II
East Coast Yeast Bugfarm IV
Water Profile
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Profile: Washington DC
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest I 75 min @ 153
Sacch II 5 min @ 157
Notes
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Started 2 qrts of bugfarm IV 36 hours in advance.
1/23/11 Brewed with Nathan. Collected 14 gallons of first runnings @1.095 and 14 gallons of second runnings @ 1.054.
All of the Styrian Goldings added to the first runnings boil.
The 3 year old Willammettes were added to 5 gallons of final runnings and boiled for about an hour.
Discovered a crack in one of the staves of our Laird's Apple Brandy barrel from McKenzie's.
Pitched 2 gallons plus the yeast cake from the beer we brewed with McKenzie's along with the Bugfarm starter. Shook to aerate. Left to ferment at ~60 ambient in 4 carboys and a bucket. Gravity of first portion 1.077. Good fermentation after 18 hours.
10/27/11 Barrel seemed to be holding the 10 gallons of sanitizer, so we racked the first 25 gallons into it. The barrel smelled much fresher/cleaner than it had before.
1/30/11 Brewed the second half
Smooth brew except a boil over with the first runnings, lost ~1/2 gallon of wort. Added whirlfloc (which we hadn't added to the first half.)
Added 4 oz fresh Willamettes to the first runnings for the boil.
1.096 first runnings (~13 gallons), second runnings 1.064 (7.5 gallons), third runnings 1.044 (6.5 gallons). Added directly to the barrel once cooled to ~80 F. Left in basement ~60 F to ferment. 27 gallons of 1.075 wort.
Ended up a couple gallons short of filling the barrel.
2/6/11 Added 1 gallon of final runnings from the Rye Saison.
2/11/11 Added 4 lbs of honey along with 4 gallons of water. Nearly at the top, but I'll wait to see how violent fermentation is before adding the last of the water.
12/11/11 Bottled 5 gallons with 5 oz of corn sugar, and 1/3 pack of champagne yeast. 5 gallons on 4 oz of Amarillo pellets. 5 gallons on ~6 lbs of blackberries, and 1 lb of mulberries. 5 gallons on 4 lbs of acorn squash (seeded skinned), and 4 g cinnamon and 2 g freshly grated nutmeg (although we pushed some of that out since it smelled so spicy). Full details on the pull and refill.
1/17/12 Bottled the dry hopped and squash/spiced portions with 5 oz of corn sugar and some rehydrated champagne yeast. Dry hopped smelled great, but I think we still over did the spicing.
4/25/12 Tasting of the plain version. Every time I try this beer I like it a bit more. Similar balance to a good Flemish red, sharp acid, just a bit of sweetness, great barrel flavor.
10/4/12 Tasting of the spiced version. Pretty good, but it would be nice to get a hint of the squash. Next time age on the squash first, then add spices for the last couple weeks.
When most people think about saison they are imagining Saison Dupont (pale, moderate gravity, relatively hoppy, peppery yeast) while in fact saison has a huge range, from featherweights like Dupont's 3.5% ABV Avril to a darker 10% ABV beer like Fantôme Spéciale De Noel. In my opinion the only constraint for calling a beer a saison is that it is fermented with a saison yeast strain.
After successes with our firsttwo dark winter saisons Alex and I (Noah moved to Colorado a few months ago) decided on a similar plan for the third in the series. This year we opted to add figs (instead of dates or raisins), buckwheat honey, and warming spices (cinnamon and anise).
The malt bill was similar to its forebears, but we reduced the original gravity to produce a more drinkable beer. The high lovibond crystal malts will provide some dark fruit character to complement the figs, and the Carafa will add a light roast without causing the dry finished beer to be harsh/acrid. For some body we added steel cut ("Irish") oats to the mash, but not before gelatinizing their starches with a quick boil (a step you can skip when using oats that have been rolled or flaked).
For additional fermentables we added buckwheat honey, the darkest most flavorful varietal we could get our hands on. After smelling the musty honey (not too far off of dark LME) we cut back the amount to lend a rich earthiness (hopefully without letting it get too funky). When Nathan and I were brewing with Terry at Bullfrog Brewing he mentioned that he used a small amount of buckwheat honey (~3%) in his 2008 GABF Gold Winning Beekeeper (a sour barrel aged saison) along with a more substantial addition of a milder honey (~7%), I've been looking for an excuse to play with the ingredient ever since.
A small amount of bitterness was all we asked from a single addition of Simcoe hops. In a big complex beer the hop variety is of little import, so I used up the last of my 2007 "hop crisis" order. Fermentation was ably carried out by the yeast cake from the Petite Funky Saison I'd brewed a few weeks earlier (with added dregs from a couple commercial sours).
So far this has been a great yearly tradition that I'm hoping we'll be able to continue for a few more falls before we get bored of the dark fruit saison concept.
Grain/Sugar
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61.7% 16.00 lbs. German Pilsener
15.4% 4.00 lbs. German Munich Malt
8.1% 2.10 lbs. Fig Puree
3.9% 1.00 lbs. Steel Cut Oats
3.3% 0.84 lbs. Buckwheat Honey
2.9% 0.75 lbs. Carafa Special II
2.9% 0.75 lbs. CaraMunich
1.9% 0.50 lbs. Special B
Hops
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1.25 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 11.00% AA) @ 70 min.
Extras
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1.00 Whirlfloc @ 10 min.
1.00 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 10 min.
2.00 gm Anise @ 5 min.
1.00 gm Star Anise @ 5 min.
0.50 gm Cinnamon @ 5 min.
Yeast
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White Labs WLP565 Belgian Saison I
White Labs WLP645 Brettanomyces claussenii
Water Profile
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Profile: Washington DC
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 90 min @ 156
Notes
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Brewed 11/13/10 with Alex
Chalk and baking soda added to the mash to make sure the pH doesn't go too low.
Oats were steel cut and boiled for 15 minutes to hydrate/gelatinize before adding to the mash about 10 minutes dough-in.
Batch sparged with 180 degree water.
Hops ~3 years old, adjusted down from 13.6% AA.
Spices ground in a coffee grinder for 10 seconds before adding.
Half Black Mission figs, half Canadian. Both organic from the CO-OP. De-stemmed, and halved. Boiled in the the final runnings for 15 minutes, then pureed with a stick blender. Added with 10 minutes left in the boil.
Organic buckwheat honey warmed in a pot of water to loosen, then added after the end of the boil (2 minutes into chilling).
Chilled to 72, then pitched half yeast cake from Bretted Saison (along with dregs from Supplication and Consecration). Shook to aerate.
Fermented for 10 days on a heating pad set to low to try to keep the fermentation temp above the ambient ~63 degrees.
12/14/10 Racked to secondary with .75 oz of dark rum soaked American oak cubes.
10/15/11 Blended some, and bottled the remaining 2.25 gallons with - 1 5/8 oz cane sugar.
5/3/12 Tastes great, although the carbonation isn't quite as strong as it could have been.The buckwheat honey softened out nicely from some earlier samples.
Honey is remarkable. The 12 oz/375 g in this saison contained the sugar paid-out by hundreds of thousands of flowers that coevolved with honeybees, incentivizing them to transport their genetic material. Those bees flew a combined distance in the tens of thousands of miles. Then, by flapping their wings to speed evaporation of the nectar, they concentrated the flowers' aromatics and sugars, preserving both for years (or potentially millennia). Boiling the honey drives off the aromatics, so with all of the effort it took to collect and concentrate them I save honey for cold-side additions!
Appearance – Radiant yellow body. Cloudy without being murky. Fantastically airy yet solid foam sitting on top. Beautiful.
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