Saison Dupont clone

Hi everyone -

Last Xmas I got a book called Clone Brews and have finally gotten around to attempting one of the recipes. Bought the ingredients for the Saison Dupont recipe yesterday and will be brewing this coming week. It's my first attempt at any clone as well as my first Belgian or wheat variant.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with this recipe or similar recipes and can give me any tips, stuff I should pay careful attention to, basically anything that's not in the instructions. I've been brewing for 1.5 years and have gotten pretty decent for a beginner extract brewer.

Here's the ingredients if anyone is wondering:

1/2 lb German Vienna malt
5.75 lb M&F extra-light DME
1 lb M&F wheat DME
1 lb Belgian clear candy sugar
1.4 oz Stryrian Goldings @5% AA (7 HBU) bittering hops
3/4 oz East Kent Goldings flavor hops
1/2 oz Curacao bitter orange peel
1 tsp Irish moss

Wyeast 1214 Belgian abby ale

1 1/4 cup M&F extra-light DME for secondary.​

I'm also wondering about this DME for secondary - I've never seen this before in any recipe I've used. Anyone care to shed some light on that?

Thanks.

I have that book too and I recommend not following it too literally. Are you sure the DME is for secondary and not for carbonating? Brewing Saisons with all extract can be tricky. The style depends high attenuation and its hard to dry out when using extract...

I confess I don't have the book on me, and the recipe was emailed to me by my wife (I'm on the road and ordered ingredients online) - so maybe she mis-transcribed something there. Certainly makes sense to me that it would be for carbonating.

So since going all-grain is not an option for me, what would you recommend in this case to increase attenuation?

rockout said:

I confess I don't have the book on me, and the recipe was emailed to me by my wife (I'm on the road and ordered ingredients online) - so maybe she mis-transcribed something there. Certainly makes sense to me that it would be for carbonating.

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I don't have mine on me either, but I know almost all the recipe in there call for DME to carbonate. I'd recommend using more Candi sugar to dry it out and make sure you have a starter for that yeast...

yeah, a starter is a definite for me - I've been using them for every beer since like my 4th one and I'm very happy with my results, both in final gravity and taste.

More candi sugar!!? I'll have to call the place I ordered from and see if I can add the sugar to shipment; hopefully it's not too late. How much would you add?

rockout said:

yeah, a starter is a definite for me - I've been using them for every beer since like my 4th one and I'm very happy with my results, both in final gravity and taste.

More candi sugar!!? I'll have to call the place I ordered from and see if I can add the sugar to shipment; hopefully it's not too late. How much would you add?

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You can just use plain table sugar if you already placed the order. I'd use 4-8oz more sugar...

Soulive said:

Brewing Saisons with all extract can be tricky. The style depends high attenuation and its hard to dry out when using extract...

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What is it about extract brewing that makes brewing saisons difficult? Just guessing - is it that when you mash you can mash for a longer time and increase the fermentability of the wort relative to the fermentability of the extract?

Looks like a pretty tasty saison recipe, but I wouldn't expect it to taste much like Dupont. Dupont is made with 100% pilsner malt (last I heard) and a very distinctive house yeast. WLP565 would give it that Dupont spiciness, but more often than not it craps out around 75% attenuation and needs help from another yeast to finish up.

You nailed it with the fermentibility of extract being the problem when you want a dry beer. As Soulive suggests, replacing some of the extract with sugar will help the attenuation.

There is a Jamil show where he talks about getting dry beers wit extract. I actually think it was the saison show. But, he says you can do a little mini mash with extract by warming the extract to sach rest temp (~50F) along with some cracked base grain and the enzymes will work even on the sugars in the extract, making them more fermentable. I don't remember the exact process, so you should see if its in the saison episode that he mentions that.

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/jamil.php

I'm not overly worried about having it taste like Saison Dupont; this is more of an experiment to see how a recipe from my Clone Brews book comes out.

I'm glad I asked about it here, though, as I'm definitely interested in getting higher attenuation, so I guess I'll add about 4 oz. of table sugar. EDIT: If I have corn sugar (that I sometimes use for bottling) would that be better than table sugar?

As a footnote, yes, the DME "for secondary" was actually a transcribing error by my wife and was indeed for bottling.

I'm going to try to find that Jamil show now.

rockout said:

I'm glad I asked about it here, though, as I'm definitely interested in getting higher attenuation, so I guess I'll add about 4 oz. of table sugar. EDIT: If I have corn sugar (that I sometimes use for bottling) would that be better than table sugar?

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Table sugar will work just fine. Add it late in the boil or dissolve it in a small amount of boiling water and add it to the wort at knockout. I've only done one extract saison and I used 1 lb of raw cane sugar. It still finished a bit sweet, but I think that was mostly because my WLP565 crapped out on me and I didn't know at the time that I could finish it with another yeast.

I can finish it with another yeast? I'm definitely interested in that. I have never used 2 yeasts in one beer.

As you may have seen from the recipe, I have W1214 Belgian abby ale. What yeast would you use to finish, and what's the procedure involved in doing this?

rockout said:

I can finish it with another yeast? I'm definitely interested in that. I have never used 2 yeasts in one beer.

As you may have seen from the recipe, I have W1214 Belgian abby ale. What yeast would you use to finish, and what's the procedure involved in doing this?

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1214 usually doesn't have problems finishing like WLP565 (W3724) is notorious for. If you want to try to add a second yeast to help things out, go with a neutral flavor yeast like W1056 and add it once your gravity drops to roughly 2/3 of OG. You don't want the second yeast to completely take over fermentation or you'll lose the flavors that would be generated by your primary yeast.

I hope someone else with experience will chime in here. I've only done this once, but was pretty happy with the results.

I tried this same extract recipe as my 3rd homebrew and had a lot of difficulty.

Wyeast Belgian Saison took my OG from 1.070 to 1.050 in about 2 weeks fermenting at 75F. Then it basically stopped. I tried using a heating pad underneath the carboy, set it to low and raised the temperature 85F. Two months later the gravity dropped to 1.040.

I gave up on this batch ever attenuating with the Saison yeast, and decided to rack on top of a Trappist high gravity cake that I had used to ferment a Tripel. Two weeks later fermnatation reached a final gravity of 1.010. The hydrometer sample had a strong alcohol smell and taste but seemed like it would be enjoyable. I will probably try to overcarb it a bit to hide the sharp alcohol flavor. I will report the taste results later.

From my experience with this batch and reading I have learned:
Saison needs to ferment at around 85F-90F.
Grow up a large starter or double pitch smack packs.
I will target pitch 200 billion yeast next time.
I will try to gently re suspend the yeast twice a day

I will also switch to the all grain version of the recipe. If this second batch turns out well, I'll culture up some Saison Dupont yeast for the third batch.

Good luck with yours.

I made that recipe from that book. I used the Wyeast 3724 yeast. I'd use a Saison yeast instead of the Abbey Ale to get the right kind of flavors--no doubt it would be good with 1214, but not the same. The flavor off of the saison yeast was definitely unique, but delicious.

Ours came out good although a little sweet. OG was 1.060; FG was 1.012. Ferment that baby *hot*. We ran ours at 84-86 F the whole time and went to secondary after 19 days. It was down to 1.022 after 10 days, so back in it went to finish off.