Thoughts on Saison style w fruit/brett

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othevad

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Hey guys.

Just curious of your thoughts on a sort of improv. recipe.
I was planning to make a fairly big saison (about 1.070 og)
5 gallons, roughly this (sorry, haven't beersmithed it in yet)

10 lbs Pilsner malt
1 lb Munich
4 oz honey malt
2 lbs of wildflower honey

Pitching with a starter of WL saison 2.
In my head this is the rough recipe for my saison, now I realized I had a vial of brett brux in my fridge as well as about 5 lbs of strawberries I just picked from a local farm and just thought about throwing the whole mess together.

In theory, what I am thinking is that the saison2 will attenuate the crap out of the beer already, so I'm a bit worried about the Brett completely thinning it out if there aren't any more complex sugars in the pre-brett saison. Also, W the Strawberries that might make a metric ****ton of alcohol with the existing recipe haha.

any thoughts/suggestions on using all of these things together in some potentially successful way? I really want to put all that stuff in there lol.
thanks
 
I would think that you would want to start the fermentation with the saison yeast, then pitch the brett and the berries. The extra sugars will give the brett something to chew on while keeping the flavor profile of the saison yeast present. I'm sure there's more to it than that so someone else chime in please.
 
Oh yeah, I'd definitely pitch the Brett down the road, after the initial fermentation was completed and do an actual secondary fermentation with the brett/berries.
 
Have you checked out the Mad Fermentationist? I'd insert a link but don't know how. He does some funky saisons with Brett and fruit. Great beer blog.
I have 5 gals of saison from my last batch that I was considering doing something like this with. I don't think the fruit will produce much more ABV unless you used way more than 5 lbs. And isn't it typical of Brett that it makes a beer finish super low in gravity? It just keeps eating when sacc. is all done.
 
My saison is going on to strawberries sometime in the next few days, but the brett is being saved for after cherry picking next weekend.

Maybe you'd want to rack to secondary with berries/Brett before primary is totally complete, just to give the Brett a bit more to munch on? I've never done it, so that could be off base.
 
Yeah man,

I've seen the blog when harvesting Heady Topper yeast from the can like he did. I'll check it out.
and yes, the brett will take the beer down pretty low I think like 1.003 - 1.006, I don't have much experience with it besides research and a batch I did with a buddy. From what I understand, if you bottle any of it (would definitely bottle some to age it) you have to be careful about not bottling too soon for the possibility of bottle bombs since the brett will keep eating and eating.

I think I'll just go for it and see what happens. The worst that can happen is I end up with a beer that is sort of "meh"
 
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