Wow, I'm starting to get up there.


Matt on 07.11.06 @ 07:18 PM PST [link] 

Got back too late to post this last night, so here it is a day later, copied straight out of my vinyl covered Hello Kitty Brewlogue:

(Based on Zac's Saison #3)
Water: 7 Gallons OB Tap Water – Didn't end up having time to get bottled.

Grain:

• 4oz Belgian Pale
  
• 4oz Belgian Aromatic
  
• 4oz Honey Malt
  
• 6oz Flaked Oats
  

Extract:

• 6 lbs Pale Malt Extract ¹
  
• 2 lbs Turbinado Sugar
  

Spicing:

• 1 tsp. cracked coriander
  
• 1 tsp. black pepper
  
• Slightly crushed seeds from 8 cardamom pods
  
• 2 tsp. fresh lemon peel ²
  
• 1" piece of ginger, diced
  

Yeast: 1 vial WLP 565 Belgian Saison Yeast.

Hops:

• 1.5oz ³ 5% Styrian Goldings @ 60 mins
  
• 1oz 3.3% Czech Saaz @ 5 mins
  

¹ Original recipe called for 4 lbs 60/40 wheat malt extract and 2 lbs pale malt extract. Was forced to substitute the whole thing with regular old pale malt syrup due to fact that Home Brew Mart was totally out of wheat malt extract. Which shouldn't have been surprising since it's the middle of summer and pretty much everybody is probably brewing hefeweizens and saisons right now.

² Substitued fresh lemon peel for dried, since dried lemon peel is expensive and lemons are not.

³ I decided to up the hopping since the original recipe called for 7% Styrian Golding and mine were only 5%.

OG was 1.062.

Steeped the grains around 150 for about an hour. I did a full wort boil for 90 minutes. Added in the Styrian Goldings at 60 minutes, spices at 15 minutes, sugar at 10 minutes, Saaz at 5 minutes. The ginger ended up being the predominant flavour in the finished wort. In fact, it tasted almost exactly like Thai ginger candy. I'm not sure it's going to end up being quite what I had in mind, especially considering the unavailability of the wheat malt, but it does seem pretty promising.

The main drawback to this recipe is the WLP 565 saison yeast, which promises to take up to 6 weeks to fully ferment before I can actually bottle the stuff. Which is a pretty serious wait for one's first beer, but hopefully it'll be worth it. In the meantime, I'm very vaguely considering doing a second batch in a couple weeks when I rack the SSE but I have no idea if I'll end up actually doing one, nor for sure what it'll be. Perhaps something quicker, but since I'm minorly Belgian obsessed these days, there's no guarantee of that.

Matt on 07.10.06 @ 09:05 PM PST [link] 

No time for that big update I was promising at the moment. There's more exciting news to relate: In less than an hour I'm off to my friend Cole's house to brew my very first beer. What kind of beer you ask? Well, since my current favorite variety of beer are Saisons I've decided that that's what I'm going to be attempting. Which seems like it might be a little much for a first try, although Zac assures me that Belgians are more forgiving of mistakes for beginning brewers since if you do something that makes it a little funky it's ok, because Belgians are supposed to have a little funk.

I'm actually basing my recipe quite heavily on Zac's recent Saison #3. Due to my complete lack of any kind of brewing experience (other than sitting in with Cole when he brewed his lacto stout a couple months ago), and also probably in part because I have lit degree, I'm planning on naming my soon-to-exist beer "Saison Sans Expérience".

Anyway, I'd better end this post since I think Cole will be here to pick me up soon. I'll post again after the brew session and report how it went.


Matt on 07.09.06 @ 01:22 PM PST [link] 

Ok, so I just spent like an hour and a half writing a really long post full of witty remarks and explanations of what I've been up to and all that. And right when I went to post it, Firefox crashed and took my whole post with it. Which may or may not be Firefox's fault (my cpu was running a little hot from the general summer warmness, but not that hot...), but regardless I'm no longer in the mood to write all that again. I'm slightly in the mood to punch something, but as that would not only be entirely ineffective in the situation, but probably also hurt my hand, I am forced to just be very annoyed instead. I'll try to do another post again before too much longer.

Anyway, sorry, I tried.

Matt on 07.04.06 @ 05:50 PM PST [link]