Saison recipe critique

hello, how does this sound as a dry-hopped saison. partial mash. 5 gallons.

Mini mash:
3# 2-row
1# belgian biscuit malt
.5# Carapils

6lb Pilsen DME

Hops:

1oz styrian goldings 60min
1oz czech saaz 20min
1oz sorachi ace 5 min
1oz sorachi ace leafs dry hop 7 days

Wyeast 3711 w/ starter

beer calc has OG of 1.077, FG of 1.015.

I like my saisons dry and crisp, and am hoping the sorachi ace will compliment the spiciness of the yeast.

How does the mini mash look, as I am new to partial mash brewing. i hope i kept things simple enough, as i always like my beers best that have the simplest recipes.

Thanks
Rich

I really enjoyed the two saisons I brewed this year with a portion of turbinado sugar added late in the boil. I think they had ~12% fermentables drawn from the sugar and I added it at 15 minutes. You mentioned wanting a dry saison, sugars would help to dry it out, maybe do 5lbs pilsen DME and 1lb turbinado?

Flavor and ingredient-wise it looks like you are on the right path. But, I see a couple problems.

First off, the starting gravity, 1.077, is pretty high for a saison. You may want to scale the whole recipe down gravity-wise to 1.060 MAX (I usually brew mine to 1.050, shooting for 6% abv), unless what you are going for is an imperial saison. Because of the attenuation you get with a properly dried out saison, a 1.060 OG can yield a 7% ABV beer. So at 1.077 you could be looking at a 9% ABV saison.

You probably want to drop the carapils and replace AT LEAST a pound of the DME with a pound of table or corn sugar. Swapping some DME out with sugar will help lower the FG and dry out the beer. Aim for 10% to 20% of your fermentables to come from simple sugar as 1.015 is too high of an FG for a saison, especially if you like it dry and crisp. You need to aim for 1.002 to 1.012 as a final gravity. The lower the final gravity, the more likely you will get that dry crisp saison you are looking for.

Good luck!

thank you very muuch for the replies.

3711 ferments very dry, and I think the FG beercalc has is very conservative. My friends and myself have used it and it ferments very dry by itself, without the addition of simple sugars, usually between 1.003-1.005.

You are right tho, in that it would be too high and ABV. If i used 4lb Pilsen DME instead of 6, the OG would be 1.054, fermenting down to 1.005 would be just over 6.5%. I think that sounds much better than the 9% projected previously.

jamest22 said:

You probably want to drop the carapils and replace AT LEAST a pound of the DME with a pound of table or corn sugar. Swapping some DME out with sugar will help lower the FG and dry out the beer. Aim for 10% to 20% of your fermentables to come from simple sugar as 1.015 is too high of an FG for a saison, especially if you like it dry and crisp. You need to aim for 1.002 to 1.012 as a final gravity. The lower the final gravity, the more likely you will get that dry crisp saison you are looking for.

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+1 to all of it.

Replace a pound of DME with simple table sugar.
Aim for OG of 1.060
Mash low (149/150)
Ferment high (75)

FG will be somewhere between 1.000 and 1.004, but taste fine.

personally i'd sub out 2 row for pilsen if you want it more traditional.

Personally, I would do 1 3.3# can of munich LME, 1# wheat LME, and minimash with 4# of the most flavorful pilsner malt that you can source (I've been digging the Weyermann Bohemian Pils recently, quite a bit more flavor than their regular Pils.)

Gonna be hard getting a dry, crisp Saison using DME. At 75-80% fermentable it's got at least 1# of carapils in it already so ditch your half pound. Not needed. Absolutely add some sugar.

Great, thank you all for the knowledge!

Going to sub out the carapils and add 1lb belgain candy sugar to the boil.

also 4lb DME not 6. but As far as the 2-row, im goign to leave that, as I am trying to model this off of Brooklyn's Sorachi Ace saison, which they say they only use 2-row.

Thanks again everyone!

You can also mash your base malt in the DME in the mid 140's F to make the DME more fermentable.