Sour Apple Saison?

Anybody have any idea how this could be made?

 

Never made a saison before, but an interesting idea would be to brew 4 gallons of a base saison (sour mash maybe) and then add fresh apple cider mid fermentation. Make sure the cider is pasteurized, cause you don't want your yeast battling the cider's yeast.

 

Depends how sour you want it. I would probably replace some amount of water with apple juice, maybe half the water with apple juice, which I would guess would give you an OG around 1.030-ish, then use malt to bump up the gravity to where to you want it. I'd probably mash pretty hot, maybe 158*.

After the mash, I'd inoculate the wort with Lacto, wait a few days, (or just one if you just want it tart), boil the wort, then add the juice and the yeast once it cooled.

 

If you made cider from crushed apples (Not store bought juice) You could use acidic varieties and make the cider fairly tart. Then blend with your saison. My wife makes cider, so I'm going to be trying a bunch of different beer-cider blends this year.

Normally I'd say to pasturize the juice so the wine yeast from the cider wouldn't dry your beer out, but saisons can finish bone dry and be ok.

However, it could easily take 9+ months to have a cider ready...

 

What about fermenting your cider with a saison yeast (perhaps 3711 -- I'm becoming a huge fan of this yeast...) instead of a wine/cider yeast, and then blending with a regular brewed saison? Or a half batch of cider with the saison yeast and then when it starts to slow, add in your malt wort.

 

I was thinking about replacing a gallon or so of water with apple juice in the boil. I'll try it and let you guys know how it turns out...

 

I wouldn't boil the juice. You'll set the pectins and the beer won't be clear, if that's something that matters to you. Boiled apple juice doesn't taste as good as fresh juice, either.

 

I made my saison as normal, then pitched some Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere dregs and 5lbs of fresh green apples from the tree in the yard in secondary.

Tastes awesome!

-chuck