Saison Au Courant (Black Currant Saison)

This is a recipe I've been planning and working on for a while. It's been in the primary for 7 days now, just racked.

Grain Bill:

8lb. Belgian Pils
1lb. Honey Malt
.5lb. Vienna Malt
.5lb. Belgian Candy Sugar

60 min. 1oz. EKG 5.5%AA
30 min. 1.5oz. Brewers Gold 8.0%AA
Dry Hop 7 Days 1.5oz. Brewers Gold 8.0%AA

WLP565
Dry Nottingham Ale Yeast

I mashed at 154 and sparged at 170. As typical with WLP565 the yeast stalled out 1.039. After three days I raised the temp in my hall closet to a little over 90 degrees with a space heater and let it ferment for four days but only went down to 1.028.

I just boiled 3/4 cups of Zante Currants in 1 quart of water, cooled, pureed, strained and poured directly into secondary with brew, along with 1 package of Dry Notty Ale yeast to hopefully dry it out. I'm now fermenting at room temp, which this time of year in Central Texas is about 70 degrees and dry hopping with some Brewers Gold.

this section is generally for tried and true recipes. That said, saisons are notorious for finishing high and the difficulty of brewing to style revolves around getting the yeast to attenuate properly. You needed to mash lower, probably below 150 and for longer than the typical 60 minutes- probably closer to 90. Currants seem like a cool idea though and im sure this will still be a kick ass beer- just not a true saison

I've made a Saison before with some success, and I'll keep in mind that this part of the forum is for tried and true, not works in progress. I raised the mash temp on this one because I figured the currants would add some tartness. So mashing a bit higher made sense, that's also the reason I added the honey malt. More sugar to balance the sour.

But I will definitely keep it in mind to mash for 90 minutes. I only made a 1 gallon batch. The recipe above is just converted up for 5 gallons. So even if it totally sucks I can go back and fix it with only 1 gallon lost.

So I just took a gravity reading and it's now down to 1.021 thanks to the Notty. I tasted the sample and the estery quality is definitely there, just not as much as I would like. I probably should have been more patient with the saison yeast and let it get down to 1.020 before I dried it out.

The black currant flavor is there, but also some raisin. I guess that's what I get for using dried currants. Going to try to dry it out to 1.010 before it goes to bottles.

Did you use 3/4 cup for the 1 gallon batch, or is it scaled up for the 5 gallon?

It's for a 1 gallon.

It finally dried out after fermenting for about another 2 weeks and got to .009.

All in all it's a good beer and definitely one I'll make again. I like the grain bill but not the dried currants. They're not tart enough. The body was far too full, and the taste is a little raisiny. Next time I'll mash it lower and try to hunt down fresh currents.

Zante currants actually come from grapes. Just found that out myself.