Dry Hopped Sour Saison (and Topper)

When it came time to bottle the Saison du Bruegel, I needed something to put on the yeast cake...I decided on a sour saison.  Brewed on 1-29-17.

While saisons are supposed to be slightly sour or notably bitter, people rarely do a sour one.  So, with the American style saison yeast (saison parfait from Bootleg Biology) and some Nelson Sauvin hops eyeballing me in the shop, I decided to make a sour, dryhopped saison. 

Ginger...Stout?

I'm going to attempt catching up on my brewing posts, guys...I have been brewing--more than ever--I promise, but just not sharing them.  I brewed the ginger stout on New Year's Day.

When I first proposed the idea of a dry stout with ginger, folks were...skeptical.  But really, it's similar flavours as in gingerbread, so I call that fairly safe.  The idea was brought about as something to let me use the yeast cake from the ginger cider.

In designing the recipe, I wanted something fairly standard for an English stout, but on the low end of the roastiness, allowing the more chocolate and coffeelike flavours from the grains to dominate those flavours.

2016 in Brewing

Well, I think this has been a good year brewing wise; I've brewed a fair amount, and upgraded my system to include an actual mash tun (even if I am keeping my full volume BIAB brew style because it's so darn convenient)--allowing me to parti-gyle with much more ease.  I also learned a lot, tried out new techniques (step-mashing, in particular), and done new styles (sour/funk).

Saison du Bruegel

So, fancy yeasts are hard to get up here, beyond some wyeast...so when I saw that Bootleg Biology had homebrew pitches up for sale, I jumped on it; purchasing the Saison Parfait (clean), Funk Weapon 3 (a fruity and mildly funky brett), and their Sour Solara Fall 2016 (full on mixed culture).  This recipe came about by my wanting to quickly use the Saison yeast with a rustic, multi-grain saison.

Brett. C "Mild"

Well...I say mild. It is built on the grain bill and meets most of the specifications of one...but my choice of using a brett means it will be a mild in the original sense of the term. And as it ages, it should transform into an old ale, as things should. This recipe was born by my need to use and build up a healthy culture of of Brett C (wyeast) so that I would be able to pitch dregs from the carboy and bottles.

Because I planned on direct pitching, and wanted it to ferment fairly quickly, I decided on a session ale; I also wanted to get a couple of low ABV beers into my pipeline, since I normally tend to brew on the bigger end. So we have an English style session ale, with about 13% crystal malts, and 8% rolled oats to keep that body up (brett doesn't produce glycerol like sacc does, so doesn't contribute to the body of your beer). In order to keep things from drying out too much, I also decided to mash high, at 157*--100% brett ferments don't get the same crazy attenuation as using brett in secondary.

Rauche-n-rye

I've never had a smoked beer, since I'm not counting an example a friend had me try, which used smoke extract.  Not a good idea, btw.

So naturally, I decided to make my own using a good amount of rauche malt--beechwood smoked malt.  And because I felt it would work nicely with the flavour--plus add body--I utilized about 20% rye malt as well.  this was further testing the Beersmith mashing calculations, with a double decoction mash.

Stirrup Cup Wheat

A while ago, somebody asked for a suggestion for a beer for an English autumn hunt.  Which naturally, got my brain whirring.