Has anyone ever made a Saison?

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B'sPointPlacePorter

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I brewed one on Jan 24 and just racked it to my secondary. Not too sure if I need the secondary, outside of the fact I do not have my bottles ready yet.
Here's the recipe:

6.6 lbs light malt extract syrup
0.5 lbs dme
2.0 lbs light candy sugar
1.0 oz powdered ginger root
1.0 oz bitter orange peel
1.25 oz Styrian goldings hops
0.5 oz Saaz hops
Belgian ale yeast

Dissolve malts and sugar in 160-170 water.
Bring to boil and add goldings hops...boil 45 min.
Add spices and boil 13 min.
Add saaz hops and boil 2 min.
Strain out hops.
Cool, aerate and pitch yeast.

What do you think?
 
Ideally, you don't use any spices/herbs in brewing a saison and instead use a saison yeast. Those flavors are entirely yeast-derived.

I'd worry that using anything other than a saison yeast will give you too many flavors not typical of a saison. Belgian yeasts tend to be pretty assertive, so it can be difficult to use a different one to replicate a style.

The rest of the recipe looks pretty good to me. I'd drop the spices and use a saison yeast, though.
 
Thank you for the advice. I got the recipe from a beer a day calender and followed it. It sounded good. Next time I can go more true to the style.
 
I totally didn't read your post properly, I'm sorry. I thought you hadn't brewed it yet.

I like to do a secondary because it keeps my hand in the beer, I get lonely without it ;)
 
Hopefully you got good advice on the temps to ferment this beer out. It relies heavily on esters and other elements of a warm fermentation although the Saison yeast (as was said before) is important here. YOu get spice like pepper and orange peel flavor and plum and currant flavor from the WL Saison fermented at about 84 degrees.

My favorites beers ever. I've got one I just pulled from the 84degree "hot tub" today. 2 weeks at 64 now and it'll be good to go.
 
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