Saison with Citrus

A couple events conspired to bring about this breath of sunnier times.  First, while the White Labs Platinum Saison II I used for the Petit Hiver fit that beer well, I really missed the more expressive character of the Wyeast French Saison yeast I’d originally wanted to propagate for a batch of Belgian dark strong ale in the new year.  Second, our local Whole Foods put 5-pound bags of California mandarin oranges on sale at the beginning of December.  It was time to bring a little bit of summer to the Utah winter.

I put together a simple low-gravity grist–base malt, white wheat, a little light crystal for sweetness–threw in an ounce of citrusy Amarillos, and ramped up the fermentation temperatures to push the esters on the yeast.  While this was in primary, there was another sale, this time on satsumas, so my citrus addition to secondary doubled.  I skinned and froze the citrus; I also zested the first bag of fruit, but by the time it came to

transfer to secondary it had started smelling funky, so I tossed it.  All told, I had six and a half pounds of citrus flesh go into secondary with the base beer, which had fermented pretty far down and was nice and estery.

Secondary has been cool to preserve as much of the citrus aromatics as possible.  Even better, I took this opportunity to properly wash yeast for the first time, with great success; I have a thick slurry of 3711 ready to tear through that coming BDSA sometime next month.  In the meantime, we’ll have an light summery beer to break up the line of dark beers and help us forget about the skiing weather outside for a while.

Sunshine Saison - saison de table with mandarins & satsumas

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.043
Projected SRM: 4.2
Projected IBU: 21.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 90%

Grains
76.9% - 5 lb 2-row
15.4% - 1 lb White wheat
7.7% - 8 oz C 20

Hops
.5 oz Amarillo (9.3%) (FWH)
.7 oz Amarillo (15 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY3711 French Saison (no starter)

Extras

6.5 lb mandarins & satsumas, crushed & frozen (secondary)
23 mandarins worth of zest (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water
1 g Epsom salt

Brewday: 27 November 2011
Mash: 10 qts @ 148F for 75 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 8.2P (1.033)
Sat for about 12 hours before the boil - no souring occurred

Started in swamp cooler at ~68F ambient; ramped up to 80F after 3 days

Secondary: 11 December 2011
SG: 1.006
Adjusted OG (w/ citrus): 1.048
Zest (sprayed with Star San, stored in tupperware container in fridge) smelled gamey, so skipped it this time.  Stick to fresh!

Bottled: 21 January 2012
FG: 1.003
ABV: 5.9%
Bottled with 4.2 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast

Initial tasting: Strikes me as overly puckering.  DeAunn likes the bready quality it has in the aftertaste.

Blueberry Stout

As it is for many homebrewers, my first-ever extract batch was an American pale ale kit, whcih made good sense in the Honolulu climate.  For the second batch, though, I went for something more winter themed: a Murphy’s Irish Stout clone with 5 pounds of frozen blueberries added at flameout.  Far from a typical dry stout, it ended up big and winey, and was definitely the most popular of my early batches.  In late 2009, I put together an all-grain batch in the same mold; again, it went over well, especially with DeAunn.  I thought I’d taken a hiatus from stouts and porters for now, but when Lisa, a new school friend of ours, found out about these past beers and volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, I certainly wasn’t going to say no.

The base beer was originally going to be a moderate-gravity milk stout with lactose and medium-dark crystal for residual sweetness, and a pound of roasted barley and 4 ounces each of American and British chocolate malts for roast complexity.  I unwittingly measured out 8 ounces each of the chocolates into a bag together at the LHBS; with nothing else to do about it, I added a few more pounds of base malt to move this one into the foreign export range.  I’d already bought a smack pack of London Ale III–my first time using this strain, and looking for its reported fruitiness to accentuate the blueberry addition to come–but with a much higher-gravity wort than originally expected and no time to do a starter, I added a couple tablespoons of Nottingham slurry.

After primary and a couple weeks sitting warm, Lisa brought over 10 pounds of frozen blueberries.  There was some stress with the spigot on the secondary fermenter I planned to use not sealing properly, so I cleaned out and sanitized my 6-gallon carboy I’d used for primary, put it all back in there, and waited for the inevitable blowoff.  I kept it cool so the blueberries’ fermentation wouldn’t get too rocking; even so, with the carboy so full there was a bit flooding the airlock after a few days.  I punched down the swelling blueberries and replaced the airlock with aluminum foil; the blueberries were still fermenting away and pushing out a bit of fluid through the carboy opening by the time we left for the midwest for the holidays, but the fermentation seemed to be slow and steady instead of violent, which should be aided by the low thermostat setting while we’re gone.

I won’t be back to bottle this beast for almost a month.  I fully expect the blueberries to ferment out completely and for the skins to impart a tannic, winey quality as had happened in the previous batches; with a high finishing gravity going into secondary, though, I hope there'll be plenty of residual sweetness to balance it.  This should be an enjoyable way to ride out the early dark months of 2012.

Blueberry Stout Strikes Back - Base

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.077
Projected SRM: 44.6
Projected IBU: 19.3
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 95%

Grains/Fermentables
70.6% - 9 lb 2-row
7.8% - 1 lb US roasted barley
6.0% - 12 oz C 80
3.9% - 8 oz US chocolate
3.9% - 8 oz UK chocolate
7.8% - 1 lb Lactose (0 min)

Hops
1 oz Northdown (7.2%) (60 min)

Yeast
1 pkg WY1318 London Ale III (no starter)
2 tbsp Nottingham (slurry)

Extras
10 lb Frozen blueberries (secondary)

Water additions (mash)
6 qts RO water

Brewday: 26 November 2011
Mash: 15 qts @ 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o lactose): 13.3P (1.054)

Fermented in swamp cooler at 63F ambient

2 December 2011: Krauesen has fallen; out of swamp cooler and into main area (65-70F ambient) to clean up

Secondary: 16 December 2011
SG: 1.025
OG (adjusted w/ estimated blueberry contribution): 1.085
Kept in 50F ambient room

Bottled: 5 February 2012
FG: 1.017
ABV: 8.9%
Bottled with 4 oz table sugar.

Tasting: A hit.  Vinous character from the blueberries is most prominent aspect, dominating even over all that roasted grain.  This one will keep coming back.

The week in brew

I have a couple new beers in the fermenters that I still need to write up, but thought I’d switch up the format a bit and cover some of my other homebrew-related stuff going on in the past few days here.

Thursday I cooked up a couple batches of chili (one with meat for me, the other vegetarian for DeAunn) based on Sean Paxton’s recipe, which first rocked my world in the spring. I kept it pretty much the same, though I simplified the meat bill; the vegetarian version got black beans and diced red potatoes in place of the meat. My batch got a bottle of Old Rasputin (always a winner) while DeAunn’s employed a local option: Epic Brewing’s Smoked Porter. The smoke phenolics went well with the chipotle pepper I added to the vegetarian chili. Both batches turned out exceptionally, and we still have a little of each left to enjoy. We complemented them with some sharp cheddar and whole wheat crackers.

Thursday night, I finally managed to bottle my Holiday 2011 and chocolate-mint-oatmeal stout. The Holiday was pretty easy; the sample seemed bland, but as the rye 70/- started out the same way and really came into its own in the bottle, I’m not too worried. The stout was a bit messier; the cocoa powder had formed a rocky doppelganger krauesen in secondary, which made my original plan to whirlpool it all to the middle of the fermenter less of a great idea. Even after giving it some time to settle before racking, the beer ran off looking like really dark chocolate milk. I added vanilla extract and all of my mint tincture, but the mint wasn’t really coming across, so on a whim I added some of the mint extract we had in the cupboard. It wasn’t until after I added it that I read the label: it’s an alcohol-free extract that includes sunflower oil, which caused it to bead up in the bottling bucket. I kept stirring as I bottled to hopefully keep it in solution long enough for it to get into the bottles, but at least the mint aroma was there. The bottles have already formed chunky cocoa krauesens, and we’ll just have to see if they develop any head at all with the oil in there. I’m also still trying to get the mint aroma out of my bottling bucket and plastic bottling pieces.

After some excitement Friday morning involving the dog, a chocolate cookie, an emergency vet visit, and some induced vomiting, I made it down to the LHBS to pick up the packet of Wyeast Brett L I special ordered for an upcoming batch, along with grains for said batch and an extra fermenting bucket. Then late Friday night, DeAunn and I cracked open the reserve bottle of my last blueberry stout, now more than two years old, with a friend. This friend has volunteered to buy the blueberries for a new batch, so the time was right for sharing. It’s mellowed a lot, and has traded much of its winey quality for more blueberry flavour, a pleasant surprise.

The only action Saturday saw was the prepping of two starters. The traditional one of Denny’s Favorite 50 (WY1450) went on the stirplate, and looks to have already finished up. The other was a lacto starter made of table sugar and a bit of base malt kept warm with an aquarium heater; that one will keep going pretty much right up until pitching time to grow as much as possible.

Sunday morning I put the new bucket to work as a secondary for a citrus saison; more on that coming soon. Six and a half pounds of frozen mandarins and satsumas floating in five gallons of beer looks pretty cool, in my humble opinion, especially with the temperatures outside right now. I also washed the yeast cake for a Belgian dark strong in the new year. Now I’m just waiting on those blueberries to arrive so I can rack the stout onto them and leave it until the middle of next month when I get back from Chicago.

Next on the brew docket is a pretty simple pale ale and an attempt at a low-gravity “quick” sour/funky beer. Don’t know yet if there’ll be time to get one or both done before leaving town for the holiday, but it sure would be nice to do so. Writeups on the beers in primary coming soon, too.