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.