Strong Saison – by Jared Smith, 2008

This recipe was loosely formulated based upon “Saison D’Hiver” from the Maltose Falcons 2001 recipe, and the Saisson recipes in Szamatulskis’ “Beer Captured”, plus several batches of experimentation. Spices are not very noticeable, even if added at secondary, until you start comparing results to completely un-spiced batches while eating various types of foods. Several cases of it were made for a friend’s wedding banquet, due to the bride’s, the groom’s, and both families’ requests for it by preference as a wedding present. It produces a dark colored “Belgian style” beer reminiscent of the famous double, Chimay Blue, in terms of appearance and intensity of grain flavors. It is also “funky” in terms of high temperature fermentation and wild bacterial flavors like those in Moinette Brune or Canada’s Fin du Monde. And, it has very fine mouth feel and effervescence comparable to a Trappist tripel such as Westmalle, but with long lasting lacy head.

O.G. ~ 1.08 to 1.084, F.G. ~ 1.01, or lower. A.B.V ~11% (Without adjuncts.)

Grain Bill for 5 gallons in bottles, plus a small tasting at bottling!– ~16 lbs

- 13 lbs Belgian Pilsner

- 0.3 lb “Special B”

- 1 lb Wheat Malt

- 1 lbs Munich Malt

- 0.6 lbs Vienna Malt, CaraVienna or CaraMunich (any mix of these varieties giving the correct total weight is o.k.)

- Just “a handful” of Belgian Chocolate malt. Authentic darkening malts are debittered black, and caramel wheat. Some traditional darkening was originally due to concentrating in a 4 hour boil of wort. Use Black Patent if nothing else is “on hand.”

Yeasts;

- Saison (White Labs™ WLP565 Saison I.)

o Seven days before brew day, begin a 0.75 quart/liter weak starter for a couple of days, then step up to 0.75 gallon/ 3 liter starter for 2 to 3 days. Chill for at least one day and decant to a pint or two for about ¼ to 1/3 cup of solid yeast sediment plus a some liquid to enable pitching as slurry. If a stir plate is used for the first 24 hours of each step, this gives a roughly appropriate pitch rate for this O.G. level of wort. A 12 hour lag time after pitching is about right for good final flavor.

o Try for ~76° F actual wort temperature (adhesive “fermometer” strip on the side of carboy is a necessity) in primary fermention. (The same as actual production for Fin du Monde.) Set the carboy in a 70° F room, or submerge in a 72° F water bath heated by a 100 watt submersible aquarium heater. Be prepared to adjust the heater, or move the carboy during the first five days of fermentation. Temperatures do change day by day!

- Brettanomyces Bruxellensis (White Labs WLP 650 for neutral mostly yeast flavor) or Belgian Sour Mix (White Labs WLP 655 for more twangy flavor.) Pitch one of these into the secondary. If you omit these bacteria, the yeast will very likely require 2 to 3 months to drop the final gravity low enough before you can bottle it without producing “bottle bombs” as I did on my first batch bottled after 5 weeks in primary, which still tasted great!

o About 2 cups of oak chips (for both “cask flavor” and a traditional home for the bacteria while in secondary.) Traditionally this is White Oak. Red oak, often available at American hardware stores, will work o.k. for short periods (2 – 3 weeks) in secondary.

Boil Extras – all introduced at flame cutoff, just before chilling wort

- 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract

- 3 average (3” long or so) cinnamon sticks

- 1 teaspoon bitter orange peel

- 1 teaspoon sweet orange peel

- 1 teaspoon of Grains of Paradise (can substitute a little more coarse ground black pepper.)

- 12 dried whole cloves

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of skinned and diced fresh ginger root

Step Mash Schedule - approximately 90 to 120 minutes

(alternate single infusion at 152° F for 60 minutes;

- Strike to 5 gallons water to 139°, and introduce grain. Rest near 128° F for 10 to 15 minutes.

- Step heat to 130° to 139° F for 15 minutes. Add water if required to enable stirring.

- Step heat to 145° F and then 150° F over 30 minutes.

- Step heat to 152° to 153°F for 30 minutes

- Raise to 165° F for mashout.

- Re-circulate to establish grain bed, and then sparge with 180° F + water (assumes you pour by hand and want high 160’s F grain bed temperature during sparge.) Allow a 20 minute hot rest at “mid-sparge” with mash at upper 160’s to boost extraction efficiency. Collect 8.0 gallons un-boiled wort.

Hops Schedule – 60 minute boil; (Any mix of noble hop will be o.k. This not a hoppy beer.) Hops preferred include Cluster, Goldings, Hallertauer, Spalt, Tettnang, etc.

- 1 oz hops for full duration of boil

- 1/2 oz hops for last 30 minutes of boil.

- 2 teaspoons of Irish Moss – last 20 minutes of boil

- Flame cut off, end of boil – add ½ ounces of hops and spices per preferrence.

Chill wort to upper 70’s. Aerate as well as possible (recommend 3 minutes with a wine degasser and an electric drill as a minimum.) Pitch big yeast starter. After about 10 days, the specific gravity should drop to about 1.02. It is definitely not done at that point if you used the Saisson specie of yeast.

Fermentation Notes:

The Saisson yeast does not work fast after A.B.V. approaches 10%, yet it will slowly continue on to roughly 11.6% if you achieved higher O.G. and give it time to do so. F.G. will probably be around 1.02 after the first 5 or 6 days of primary fermentation. You can either wait a couple of months, gravity dropping 2 to 3 points per week, or get this over quickly with bacteria that are authentic to the style in just a couple of more weeks. I recommend racking to secondary after 10 days and introducing some oak chips plus Belgian style bacteria. The bacteria alone can ferment the entire beer alone without any yeast within about 14 days, and are not very fussy about initial aeration. Don’t bottle until F.G. drops below 1.01, because it eventually will.

Prime with ¾ cup of priming (corn) sugar dissolved in hot/warm chlorine free water. Condition a minimum of 3 months. 9 to 18 months after bottling is considered optimal conditioning if it can be stored somewhere around 60° to 70° F that long.