Belgian Saison yeast with a hop-forward profile?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mysticmaven

New Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2014
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Hi, I live in korea and we have a limited amount of yeast to purchase here. Because of the nasty heat this time of year, we have decided on the Danstar Belle Saison yeast because it ferments fast and at high temperatures. Unfortunately we can't do much better than that.

Does anyone have any recipe ideas for using this yeast to create either a belgian strong ale or a belgian-style ipa? My friends and I are new at this so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers from the ROK!
 
I don't have a recipe, but you could check out the Recipes tab to find something.
 
Back in the day I brewed a belgian style IPA with white labs saison II yeast that had nothing but 2-row, flaked wheat, and a bunch of centennial hops. It was really tasty, but the yeast was definitely the star of the show.
 
... the yeast was definitely the star of the show.

if you haven't done this style, the words above are the essence of Belgian anything. Make your hop choices with those Belgian phenols in mind.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
This is just my opinion, but I'm not a fan of hoppy Saisons, because it just seems like too many competing flavor profiles occuring in the same space. It stands to some reason why you typically see lower alpha noble hops used in those beers. That being said, I just enjoyed a saison dryhopped with cascade and it was very tasty, with many more to come thankfully. The cascade is subtle and congruent with saaz or ekg that I bittered it with (can't remember which one). It's your beer and you can do whatever you want with it, but the art of it all always seems to fall back into the concept of balance.
 
Another balance issue with saison is how dry it tends to get, and hop bitterness (or too much) can affect the overall impression easily. If you want to play with other flavor components in a saison, I advocate pitching a large amount of the yeast and fermenting on the cooler side if possible to reduce saison esters/phenols. In that scenario it may play nicer with hop flavors, and if you do want a hop forward profile, use hops that accentuate the saison itself by staying with the citrusy/floral types, and less/none of the dank or piney hops.
 
thanks for the advice. We ended up using all citra hops, because of a snafu when we built the recipe at the brewshop. Since we live far from the supplier, it was either brew or wait a while, so we decided to go with it. The citra hops have a really nice floral / orange aroma which supposedly can match well with the saison yeast.

I'll let you guys know how it goes. One side note is we hit our OG on the nose our first time out of the gate, which is incredibly gratifying as we still don't really know what we are doing hahaha.
 
Back
Top