1st Saison, throw some hops at it!

This is going to be my 1st Saison, and my 2nd AG batch. Going with a "Batch Sparge" this time after doing "No Sparge" on my 1st AG. This should be a good time, try something new, throw all I've learned about fermentation into the wind, mess with recipe guidelines, you can see where this is going? :rockin:

Made the last minute change to go with Wyeast 3711 after temps have dropped down into the low 70's/60's. It's sitting in a growler right now working away. I'm happy I found all the Saison yeast posts on here that pointed me in the right direction for that! Looking forward to a fast ferment and getting that beast in a bottle ASAP. Here we go...

Belgian Amarillo hopped Saison

OG Est. 1.062
Est FG we'll see!
Est ABV 7.05%
IBU 56.1
SRM 6.0

Yeast: Wyeast 3711 French Saison
120min Boil Time

2.75gal batch
Batch Sparge Aprrox Efficiency, 68% (bumped my grain bill by 10% to compensate)

3.75lbs Belgian Pilsner Malt
2.25lbs German Wheat Malt
0.33lbs Aromatic Malt
.25-.50 lbs sugar (depending on where gravity stands out of the tun)

0.70 oz Amarillo @ 60 min
0.50 oz Amarillo @ 20 min
1.00 oz Amarillo @ 00 min

Any feedback is appriciated! I'll take pictures and let ya'll know how it turns out

Looks tasty. Glad you're keeping the recipe pretty simple.

It's been brewed. Starting the fermentation at 1.064, got a little better efficiency than last time. I'm a little afraid that I overheated a little bit with the mini heater I had pointed at it to heat it a bit. It'll cool down though.

it did create a little bit of a vaccum though, and sucked some of the water in from the airlock. I'm a little worried about that :/

Unless you use sewer water in your airlocks, everything should be fine, the yeasts overwhelm the nasties that live in a few drops of water, if there were any to begin with. I top off my brews with plain tap water if needed (so a few cups to a whole gallon) and have not had any problems whatsoever.

I was just a worried about the sanitizer finding it's way in there. The fermentation is going awesome so far though. I have it wrapped in blankets and I'll warm it every so often with a little space heater just to keep pushing the yeast

The 3711 is a beast. Been in the fermenter for 4 days and it looks to have finished up today. Going to let it sit until tomorrow night and take a reading, but there's one small island of yeast holding on up top...but it's going to break off and fall into the beer ocean.

Let this beer sit until today (7 days in the primary just to make sure it cleaned up) and took the gravity... 1.003. Holy crap, it was suppose to be 6.2% ABV.... ended up about 8% ABV oops! A good problem to have

How much sugar did you add? Sugar will ferment 100% and and alcohol produced will lighten your FG.

This sounds good, might have to make it. I got 10lbs of Pilsner malt on the way.

I ended up using .25lbs of sugar, so not very much as far as the Belgians go. If I made this recipe again, I'd probably dial back the hops a little more. It has a big hop character to it (more than intended), so I'm going to let it bottle condition warm for some extra time to let it mellow that out a bit.

End result?

kahler said:

end result?

Click to expand...

+1....