Looking for advice on a saison recepie

[vedant]

Hey guys

I'm looking for advice for this SAISON recepie. How does it look on paper?

This is going to be a 5 Gallon batch.

2.5Kg German Pilsner Malt
2.5 Kg Pale Malt
0.6 Kg Wheat Malt
0.4 Kg Crystal Malt(Light)
0.4 Kg Vienna Malt
0.2 Kg Acid Malt

60 min Mash at 68C
60 min boil

28g Syrian Golding Hops(60 mins)
14g Syrian Golding (20 min)
14g Czech Saaz(1 min)

Safale Be - 134 yeast

I'm also going to add some ginger at 0 min and some strawberries on the secondary.

Does this look alright?
Thanks in Advance

 

[catdaddy66]

That looks like something I would brew. Don't know about the yeast as I haven't used it before but hops and grist look good. Only thing that may be out of style is the crystal malt but I think it's fine.

 

[Calder]

That is a lot of crystal for a Saison. May make a decent beer, but a Saison is more yeast, less malt, dry ... Crystal is very much the opposite of all these. I just made a Saison with 0.5 lbs (of 5L Crystal) in 6.5 gallons.

Saisons are usually dry, some of that comes from the yeast, and some comes from the ingredients/mash. Simple sugars are frequently used in Saisons to help 'dry' them out; I'd suggest adding at least 1 lb of sugar (table sugar is fine). 68 C (154 F) seems just too high a mash temp to get the dryness in a Saison. Probably be better at 65 C (150 F) or even lower to help ferment the sugars.

I am not familiar with that yeast, but looking at it's specs, it needs to be fermented high. I hope you have a heating system. Fermentis says 18-28°C (64.4-82.4°F); you are going to get most of it's character at the higher temps, and higher attenuation. I think I'd start this one off at 70 F, and then slowly ramp up to 80 F over a week.

 

[thehaze]

The Crystal malt does not belong in that recipe. Saison yeast pairs well with different grains, so take out the Crystal and throw in some more Wheat, Rye, Spelt, Oats in there. Start at a relatively low OG ( 1.050 ) and shoot for anything between 5 and 6% ABV. BE-134 will attenuate a lot, easily reaching 85-90% apparent attenuation. Add some sugar ( 5-10% ) and take out some malt. Unless you have really poor efficiency, that grainbill will get you close to an OG of 1.070 and that's with only 75% efficiency and for 21 l in the fermenter. So you need to cut some more, otherwise you will end up with a 8% ABV Saison. Maybe that's what you actually want?

Also, I would mash much lower: think 63-65C and boil for 90 minutes, to make sure no DMS ends up in the beer.

 

[mashpaddled]

The grain bill is unnecessarily busy and you could dump at least half unless there is a specific reason for each component. If you can't explain exactly why each grain is there then it should go. You could make a saison with only pils malt. For what you described as your goal I would reduce the recipe down to pils malt, wheat and either pale malt or vienna (but not both) and dump both the crystal and acid malt.

 

[deadwolfbones]

Agree with above, I'd dump the crystal and pale malt and add more pilsner. If you want color, use a tiny bit of midnight wheat.

 

[couchsending]

The benchmark for the style uses one malt and one hop.

Phil Markowski’s book on Farmhouse Ales is a great read if you haven’t read it.

 

[catdaddy66]

The benchmark for the style uses one malt and one hop.

So saison is the original sMasH beer??

 

[couchsending]

So saison is the original sMasH beer??

Or Pils?

Just like with Pils the process can be almost more important than the recipe.

Mashing Regime
Fermentation Temp
Cellaring Porcedure

Personally I think Saisons should all be bottle conditioned and to quite high a level of Co2.