Is this going to be a mistake!?!?! Nelson Sauvin, Sorachi Ace, Citra- French Saison

I’m making a Saison next week and wanted to get some input on my receipt. I’m going for something insane, yet tasty! My last ten or so beers have been solid beers, but are pretty standard receipts and are getting a little boring. Don’t getting be wrong drinking good beer is never a bad thing, but I a little burned out on brewing generic brown ales, standard saisons, Belgium wits and west coast “C” hops IPAs.

What I have come up with so far is the result of wanting to try something different that could either be awesome or a total failure.

6 lbs 2-row
4 lbs veinnea
2 lbs wheat
Mashed at 150

0.33 oz Citra First wort
0.33 oz Citra 10 mins
0.5 oz Nelson 10 mins
0.5 oz Sorachi 10 mins
0.33 oz Citra flame out
0.5 oz Nelson flame out
0.5 oz Sorachi flame out

Wyeast 3711 French ale yeast fermented somewhere in the low 70’s
0.5 lbs Honey (added to primary after 3 or so days fermenting)

Right now Beer Smith is putting this at 1067 OG and 37 IBUs. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

:beard:

looks good, i'd drink it...but that's not saying much i suppose...sorry no real critique.

My best saison uses sorachi ace and citra exclusively if that's any encouragement. Just don't go too crazy with the additions and you should be fine. I'd imagine nelson would be tasty as well.

I've brewed saison's with different combinations of those three and they've all turned out great. Both Nelson and Citra will overpower the Sorachi so tailor your amounts to focus on which flavors you want more prevalent.

Also, low 70s for 3711 leads to a kind of muted saison-yeasty flavor, which is cool if you're going for that. High 70s - low 80s is where i rock 3711 and get the best results. Just my opinion though.

Will be tasty for sure! And saisons are a great style to play with... i've got a black saison IPA that drops jaws every time i brew it.

Thanks for the input yall. After reading more I'm a little on the fence about Sorachi ace in this batch and might sub out for amarillo which would mesh well with the citra and Nelson IMO. In which case I would use 0.5 oz amarillo in the first wort addition and anther 0.5 oz around 5 mins or so left in the boil. I would move the citra to 0.5 oz 10 min and 0.5 oz flame out.

Dire Wolf- I plan to make a Black Saison next. Once this batch is done I am going to wash the yeast and add it to a "dark grain mix" that I have no clue what is. Back story... I was at my LHBS and a guy came in earlier that day and mixed and crushed some grains for a stout/porter/black IPA something dark and decided against it at the last minute. The LHBS was left with about 3 lbs of crushed who knows what so I took it off their hands for a greatly reduced price. To the best of their knowledge it has lots of dark munich (maybe 2 lbs) some dark crystal (color unknown), little black patent, maybe carafa, maybe some special B and some chocolate malt. They said it was probably about 6 or 7 different grains based on what the guy told them... Anyway I need to do something with it so I might make a black Sasion and add 10 or so lbs of 2-row to the dark grain mix. What hops do you use in your jaw dropping black saison if you don't mind me asking. I'm in the market for a recipe that this eclectic bag of who know what can go in.

:beard:

Will be tasty for sure! And saisons are a great style to play with... i've got a black saison IPA that drops jaws every time i brew it

...hook me up with that recipe!

TheCanisDirus said:

And saisons are a great style to play with... i've got a black saison IPA that drops jaws every time i brew it.

Click to expand...

you going to give that recipe up?

I guess we aren't going to get that recipe...

My LHBS was out of the Sorachi ace so I changed up the hops schedule a bit

Here is my final hop schedule
0.33 oz amarillo 10 min
1 oz citra 10 min
0.33 oz amarillo 5 mins
1 oz Nelson 5 mins
0.33 oz amarillo flame out
1 oz El dorado flame out

The grain bill stayed the same 6 lb 2-row 4 lb vienna malt and 2 lb malted white wheat. I also added 0.5 lb of brown sugar to the boil and 6 oz of honey to the primary after 5 days (I get antsy when I follow recipes to the T). The starting gravity was 1.079. Eight days in the 3711 isn't showing any signs of slowing down. From yalls experience how long to you age 3711? This turned out to be a bigger beer than I had in mind, not that I'm complaining.

:beard:

Whoa! Sounds like a very american-inspired saison. But saisons have (almost) no rules

The Citra and sorachi (not too familiar with sorachi tbh) yields a lot of that citrusy thing. While Nelson give you that tropical. This is not what I think a saison should be like, but like I said, saison has almost no rules.

I'd mash lower, like 147 to try to dry it out. And I'd also use some more spicy hops, like mittelfruh, perle, tettnang etc. More of the continental european stuff... I believe that's more "true" to the diffused saison-style. I feel this plays more along with the yeast, than using fruity hops.

I enjoyed a beer I made with Nelson/Citra and 3711. Hopped late with more Nelson than Citra, same went for the dry hop.

This beer turned out big.. Too Big.. 10%. The hop flavor isn't there, but the spice and bitterness provide a big punch that hangs with you in an unfavorable way IMO. Other people seem to like the flavor. If I could do this again I would make it 5-6 abv and try to make the hop flavor and aroma more assertive. Anyway it was a fun experiment, just not for me.

So I ended up saving a gallon of this stuff and added some brett Trios to it about 3 months ago. As of now this beer seems to have mellowed and is starting to get an awesome brett funk. I planned to remake this same beer but lower the ABV to ~6% and move the hops back to later additions and more dry hops. I also planned to add the mixed brett culture I have of brett trios and the dregs of a crooked stave st bretta. I think with these changes this beer could be awesome

Sounds a little like my current offering: Big Pig. I did a saison yeast with my IPA wort. The saison yeast esters REALLY tone down the hops, but I think it turned out awesome. I suppose if you wanted it to be hoppy tasting and belgian we must have to really up the IBUs?

Looks tasty!