Sunday 15 July 2012

Pleuvoir Saison

I wanted to re-use yeast.  This is something we've never done, we've talked about doing this, but always figured it posed too big a risk to the beer.  Contamination, extra storage, extra time ... always seemed too much trouble.  I caught a old spaghetti's jar worth of yeast from Random Ass Wit brewed back in April.  I was a bit chicken to re-use the yeast on Beleaguered Wit so I decided to use fresh yeast (we now have a plethora of Wit Yeast if anyone in the Houston Area needs some).  Brewing another wit seemed like overkill and I was reading on the net where wit yeasts could be used as a substitute in the saison style ... opportunity strikes!

I read around the net for saison recipes, inspiration mainly from here and here.  Brewday morning we (Von and I) went to the Sugar Land farmer market and came across a pint of very ripe figs which looked perfect for a brew.  That along with a couple of ripe pears given to us by Von's mom made for a good fruit addition.  This set the recipe:



I began the yeast starter the day before brewday:  ideally this would be a few days longer.  The re-used yeasts looked good, smelled o.k... what the heck.  1/2 cup DME to 1 L of water, boil, add re-used yeast (careful not to add the very bottom portion which had a bits of something, probably hop pellets).  It took off well:



 Brew day went awesome.  Jeff and Tim came down to help as well as a friend from Canada, Alyaz who had landed that day in Houston for some training.  We finished the Random Ass Wit and started the Beleagured Wit.  We also had some good fun an a suprisingly cool and not supprsingly rainy July Houston Day.


Mashed at 130F for 20 min Protein Rest, 90 min for the Sacc Rest, and 15 min at 164 F for mash-out.  Used propane flame to increase temperature with a slow stir around the side to keep the heat uniform (false bottom at the base.)


Sparged 7 gallons of wort with sparge water at 180 F.  Sparged 7 gallons over 40 min.  Had some trouble maintaining liquid level in the mash-tun but not too bad.




Measured hops a bit more carefully in than in previous batches.  These hop additions should get within target BTU's.


I did say cool Houston day right?  We flowed wort at a mass rate just enough to get flow so that ~ 84 F was the best we could get.  We also had our typical geeky heat exchanger argument (Jeff's right, moving of on).  We were close enough for r the yeast pitch (honorary international yeast pitch done by Alyaz):


One cool thing we did was use the final runnings of the sparge (about a gallon) to boil the cubbed figs and pears.  After cooling in ice the mixture was purreed and added to wort with about 20 min left in the boil.  Inspiration for the idea here:

 The figs oozed sugars and perhaps 0.9 lbs were charged instead of the 1 lb :)


 The puree somewhat thick and smelled awesome.

Put the fermentor in the fermentation chamber at 68 F to cool to 72 F for two days then raised to 75 F.  FG was 1058 very close to the 1060 predicted.  Von also cooked and awesome dinner and we watched some awesome netflix.  Great time.

7/15/12:
Checked the IG (intermediate gravity, after primary).  Came in at 1012 which has been better attenuation than any of the recent batches.  I will not brew without a starter again hands down.  Its worth it, and the yeast recycle went well.  The beer tastes good, good flavor.  Still a bit hazy ... some yeasts settled in the hydrometer tube (sample taken from side port).  Harvested two jars of yeasts!  Stay tuned.

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