hank427 said:
I'm about to rack my first attempt at a saison into secondary, and after trying a taste of it, it's got a bit of a tart, sour finish. The recipe I used, which came from the book Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher, called to throw in a half oz. of coriander, and orange peels of one fresh orange and grapefruit peels of a quarter of a fresh grapefruit with 5 minutes left in the boil. It's got a nice Belgian yeasty taste at first, but finishes a bit more sour than I'd like. Any suggestions on any spices I could add during secondary that might sweeten it up? Thanks!
What yeast are you using, and temps are you fermenting at? Are you using Randy Mosher's precise recipe?
Saison fermented with just a saccharomyces strain shouldn't really END UP tasting "sour". Are you talking about a Belgian-y "sourness" like you might get in, for instance, a Belgian Golden Strong, or sourness in a more literal sense, i.e. an acidic sourness?
I don't know if I'd be trying to fix such a flavor when you don't really know how (or even if) it will present in the final beer. I'd be more inclined to leave it alone. What's the FG at anyways? Has it even fully attenuated yet?
But regardless of all that, "sweetness" doesn't really counteract any sort of sourness, it will just be sweet AND sour, and I can't imagine that helping the beer - especially a saison which is really at its best when it's bone-dry, which is how it's meant to be. Or maybe the problem you're describing as sourness IS the fact that it's so dry. If that's the case, and you still don't like it when it's carbed and ready to drink, saison is probably just not your style. Have you had any commercial examples of the style?
Furthermore, I'm not even entirely sure what you mean by "sweeten" if you're expecting to accomplish it with a spice. I CAN tell you that the other two spices often used in saisons are cracked black pepper, and paradise seeds/grain of paradise. But neither will accomplish anything remotely like you've described.
With all this in mind, I strongly recommend you just RDWHAHB and let the beer work on itself. Chances are that it'll end up tasting perfectly normal once it's ready to drink. But just in case, answer the questions at the top.
Edit: When it said to use orange and grapefruit "peels", is that the exact word that it used? Or did it say something like orange zest, rinds, etc? I suppose some people might confuse the bitterness of the white pith as "sour", and sweet definitely often does counteract bitterness, but sweetening a saison is just really not the answer here, and would be absolutely criminal!
