Is this a terrible idea?

I've been thinking about brewing a high-octane lawnmower beer to celebrate the arrival of warm weather. Based on what I've got on hand, I'm thinking 10 pounds of 2-row, 5 pounds of flaked maize, maybe a pound of Vienna, throw in enough UK hops (I've got EKGs and First Golds) to hit 25-30 IBUs, and ferment bone-dry with a saison yeast.

I don't typically brew pale beers (almost everything I do is in the amber-brown range) and I'm worried this will come out a bit weak on flavor and body. I guess one possibility would be to mash fairly high. If I do make this, I'm calling it Dragon Piss... What do you folks think; should I do it?

With that much maize its going to be real sweet, either cut the maize or up the bittering hop amount.

bh10 said:

With that much maize its going to be real sweet, either cut the maize or up the bittering hop amount.

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Huh? Why would maize make the beer sweet? When corn & rice are added, they typically really dry out your beer leaving virtually no residual sweetness. Most BMC is up to 40% corn or rice & it certainly isn't sweet in any way.

To the OP, what you're essentially looking at here is making a malt liquor with saison yeast and Golding hops. With those hops & Belgian yeast, I guess you really could call it Olde Belgian 800.

In my finding corn does add a sweetness, rice on the other hand doesnt.

If you are going to use that much maize, why not use 6-row? I'd add more hops too but that's just my preference.

bh10 said:

In my finding corn does add a sweetness, rice on the other hand doesnt.

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I've never seen anything anywhere to support this. Certainly sugar derived from corn is massively more fermentable than sugar derived from malt and therefore will make beer less sweet than an all malt beer.

Your recipe sounds like a good start. Look at this https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/cream-three-crops-cream-ale-66503/ for inspiration. I've brewed it several times and its turned out great. Maybe you can just scale it up a bit.

Also, unless you like the sasion taste, you might want to stick with a neutral yeast strain. I'm not a fan of it but its just a personal opinion.

I find corn to leave a residual sweetness as well. And I do think that BMC beers are a little sweet. Of course, you could always just add more hops.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm going to do this with the grain bill as is and see what happens. I think I will add more hops than I initially planned in case it comes out sweet. Maybe 35-40 IBUs instead? I don't want this to be IPA-ish.

@michelson39: In my experience the Wyeast French saison strain is pretty neutral if you ferment below 75, as I plan to do. I've seen monster attenuation from it, >85%, which is what I'm looking for here. I kind of like the saison esters anyway.

Thanks for the info.

You might find this gravit/hops ratio chart useful to nail down your IBU's. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/

Go for it. I think you're not making a "lawnmower" beer anymore though. More like a big Cream Ale.

Personally I wouldn't use the Saison yeast either, but I wouldn't call anything a bad idea. We homebrew so we can try these oddball things.

bh10 said:

In my finding corn does add a sweetness, rice on the other hand doesnt.

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Well, corn certainly does add something. I would stop short of calling it a sweetness though. Of course we all have different tastes. I would say it gives a slight corn flavor (not diacetyl) that has a certain richness/fullness to it. Kinda sweet like. In my American lagers (w/corn) I like to use a bock yeast strain as these seem to promote malty flavors and give a fuller feel to the beer and keep it from being too thin (like BMC).

I think a typical lawnmower beer should be under 25 IBU's to ensure that it is poundable. Now you are pushing the ABV up, so I might boost the IBU's a little to balance that.

If you go with Belgian/Saison yeast, I personally would ferment on the cool side, and then at the very end warm it up so it finishes dry. I find that if a beer has a lot of esters, while they can be very tasty indeed, they make it harder (but not impossible of course) to drink lots of, and quickly. To me a great lawnmower is one that can be sucked down and make you crave another

I would not mash higher if you want something "light" and refreshing. You should get plenty of flavor from the yeast

My rules for a lawn mower beer.

The lower the FG, the more chug-able - this one has two main parts, mash schedule and yeast choice
The lower the IBU's the more chug-ale
The more base malt, and less specialty malts, the more chug-able
The more adjuncts (corn or rice) the more chug-able.