Summer Solstice is here! I guess is time to brew a Saison!

This time of year it just makes sense to brew a Saison!    I'll be brewing up a 10 gallon batch of Saison Brett in the next few days utilizing the long evening to light up my brew sculpture and the high heats in my upstairs attic to truly make a refreshing seasonal drink!

The plan is to do  Saison Brett with Pale, Pilsner, Red Wheat, Unmalted Wheat and Vienna malts..  Amarillo and Strisselspalt hops and split the batch two different ways.   Both will get a small dose of Wyeast French Saison 3711 yeast.   One will get a healthy dose of White Labs Brett C, and the other will be a healthy dose of Brett Drie!   Should be some tasty beers in about 3-4 months and will age well for 2 years!  I highly recommend using a traditonal Saison step mash when brewing Saison's to get a nice huge rocky head.  Here's what I do with much success!

Dat Dank "Dank" - Double IPA | Farmers Market | Brewing Demonstrations

A few things that I'd like to touch on that I did over the weekend.   First off, my homebrew club, the Nordeast Brewers Alliance, has been doing brewing demonstrations at the Northeast MPLS Farmers Market over the past three weekends and it's been an amazing time.   At the Farmers Market we are mainly trying to just get the word out locally that we have a Homebrew Club, talk to people about Craft beer, and recruit new members, and it's exceeded our expectations on all levels!    There is crazy buzz about beer in NE Minneapolis right now with 4 NEW breweries scheduled to open in my neighborhood this year!   It's a fun time to be in Minneapolis if you like being around a Craft Beer Revolution! 

What a great place to be demonstrating crafting your own beer.   People that attend farmers markets love when you use local ingredients and create something from scratch!   So many people stop by our booth and talk to us about beer and our club.  We passed out about 150 flyers, talking to twice that amount of people and have had 13 new members sign up to join our club!  Our boiling wort is wofting across the Farmers Market and people seem to love the smell...like grapenuts in the morning!    We've created and strengthened a bunch of relationships, ex., an ice cream vendor is creating specialty ice creams for us with our homebrews,  I've found a source for beet pollen (for my Jitterbug Perfume inspired beer that's been in my minds vault for years), we've talked to a local honey producer about bulk buys, etc.
    
For the beer we brewed this week, we actually brewed 10 gallons of IPA wort and then split it into two 5 gallon batch's with different hop schedules.  Justin hopped his with Zythos hops for our Single Hop IPA experiment in July, and I hopped my 5 gallons with the hop bill from the somewhat famous homebrew IPA recipe called THE DANKNESS created by Nathan Smith out in California.

Here is my recipe.  I used the Two Hearted Wort, added some Honey that I bought at the Farmers Market, and then hopped it like The Dankness!

Single Hop Recipe's | 3rd Running Berliner Pale recipe

Apollo Single Hop IPA

malt & fermentables

%	LB	OZ	Malt or Fermentable	ppg	°L
92%	12	0	American Two-row Pale	37	1
8%	1	0	American Crystal 40L	34	40
	13	0

Batch size: 5.5 gallons

Original Gravity: 1.058

Final Gravity 1.015 / 3.8° Plato

Color: 7° SRM (Gold to Copper)

Mash Efficiency: 67%

Bitterness: 52.6 IBU

Boil: 6.0 avg gallons for 60 minutes

Mash: 151 degrees for 1 hour

Sparge: 168 degrees for 15 minutes

Pitch at 68 degrees with US-05 at 63 degrees for 3 days using a swamp cooler

hops

use	time	oz	variety	form	aa
boil	60 mins	0.2	Apollo	pellet	19.7
boil	15 mins	0.8	Apollo	pellet	19.7
boil	5 mins	1.0	Apollo	pellet	19.7
dry hop	7 days	1.0	Apollo	pellet	19.7

 

Sterling IPA Single Hop

malt & fermentables

%	LB	OZ	Malt or Fermentable	ppg	°L
92%	12	0	American Two-row Pale	37	1
8%	1	0	American Crystal 40L	34	40
	13	0

Batch size: 5.5 gallons

Original Gravity: 1.058

Final Gravity: 1.015

Color: 7° SRM (Gold to Copper)

Mash Efficiency: 67%

Bitterness: 50.8 IBU

Boil: 6.0 avg gallons for 60 minutes

Mash: 151 degrees for 1 hour

Sparge: 168 degrees for 15 minutes

Pitch at 68 degrees with US-05 at 63 degrees for 3 days using a swamp cooler

hops

use	time	oz	variety	form	aa
boil	60 mins	1.5	Sterling	pellet	6.3
boil	20 mins	1.0	Sterling	pellet	6.3
boil	5 mins	1.5	Sterling	pellet	6.3
dry hop	7 days	1.0	Sterling	pellet	6.3

3^rd Runnings Berliner Pale

malt & fermentables

%	LB	OZ	Malt or Fermentable	ppg	°L
89%	1	0	American Two-row Pale	37	1
11%	0	2	American Crystal 40L	34	40
	1	2

Batch size: 1.0 gallons

Original Gravity: 1.031

Final Gravity: 1.006

Color: 5° SRM (Yellow to Gold)

Mash Efficiency 75%

Boil: 1.2 avg gallons for 60 minutes

Bitterness: 7.0 IBU

Pitched Wyeast Lactobacillus at 100 degrees for 3 days and smelled really nasty.

Pitched Brett B, Brett L, and Brett Drie Slurry

hops

use	time	oz	variety	form	aa
boil	20 mins	0.05	Sterling	pellet	8.5

Single Hop IPA | Apollo and Sterling Varieties | 3rd Runnings Berliner

Single Hop IPA experiments are an amazing thing to do with a Homebrew club for many reasons.  Hops fade so quickly it's almost impossible to do this type of experiment on a large scale by yourself.   Doing the experiment as a group is really the only way to taste the difference between a bunch of hop varieties at one time to really understand the characteristics of bittering, aroma, and flavor of a given hop.

There are many ways to go about doing a Single Hop IPA experiment but here is the best way in my opinion.   Since we know what the IBU's of a beer are by the label on the package where we bought them the goal should be that everyone hits a specific IBU say 70.   Your Flavor and Aroma additions should be either exactly the same size or very close the same size.  Adjust your 60 minute bittering contribution accordingly.  Use a simple malt bill that will let the hops shin without tons of caramel malts getting in the way!  For this reason we choose to do a clone of Bell's Two Hearted (which is Centennial through and through)