05 – Antithesis Saison du Vin

For my next batch of home-brewed beer, I wanted to try something new so found this recipe called “Antithesis Saison du Vin” from the folks at NorthernBrewer.com. It is a saison recipe that incorporates the juice from sauvignon blanc wine grapes! The things about this recipe that will be new for me are…

• first time trying a saison (previously have done IPA, stout, porter recipes)
• fermentable sugar from a source other than the grains
• first time using oak spirals instead of cubes/chips

I’ll try to source the actual ingredients from my LHBS, but the URL for this is:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/antithesis-saison-au-vin-all-grain-kit

For the grain bill, I am going with the following (original items in parenthesis)…

percentage	lbs	ingredient
88.57%	8.0 (7.75)	Dingemans Belgian Pilsner Malt (Malteries Franco Belges Pilsen Malt)
11.43%	1.03 (1.0)	Briess Carapils
100%	9.03 (8.75)

For the hops/additions schedule, I am going with the following (original items in parenthesis)…

timing	amount	type
60 mins	0.5oz (0.25)	NZ Nelson Sauvin hops
15 mins	1.5oz	NZ Nelson Sauvin hops
end of boil	46oz	Sauvignon Blanc grape juice concentrate
yeast	1	Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saision (Wyeast 3711 French Saison or Danstar Belle Saison dry)
yeast (2-3 days in)	1	Wyeast 3711 French Saison
additions (1 week in)	1	French Light Toast oak spiral

Due to recipe OG calling for 1.066, am going to use two packs of yeast instead of one. Am going to experiment by starting fermentation with the Belgian strain, then going to add the French one once that subsides (based on a suggestion from LHBS). I’ve read that the 3724 keeps chugging if you keep the temperature high enough though, but again since OG is a touch higher going to have reinforcements 😛

Brew-day updates:

OK so we made this batch Thursday night (4/23/2015) and have the following updates…

• smacked WYeast packet at 6:30pm
• flame on for 8 gallons of strike water at 6:50pm, reached 162F at 7:25pm
• grains in BIAB bags by 7:34pm, water at 157F (darn).
• pulled bags at 8:34pm to squeeze them, done at 8:46pm. recovered about 60oz of wort.
• flame back on at 8:45pm, hit 212F at 9:15pm.
• water volume higher than 6.5 gallons, so boiled down for a bit. added 60 min hops at 9:30pm once got closer to 6.5 gallons.
• 15 min hop additions at 10:15pm, also put immersion cooler into wort to get sanitized.
• added 1/2 whirlfloc tablet at 5 mins left mark, at 10:25pm.
• flame out at 10:30pm, poured in the sauvignon blanc concentrate and let sit for 5 minutes.
• started cooling wort at 10:35pm. got down to 80F in 3 minutes! got to 70F in 5mins,20secs. got to 65F in 6 mins. done cooling at 10:41pm.
• even with 30 mins boiling down, ended up with what looked like just over 6 gallons in the bucket. scooped out about 30-35 ounces to give a bit more breathing room for fermentation (into sink #FML)
• hydrometer reading for the OG looks right about 1.062 (.004 short of target).
• done cleaning at 11:52pm
• The WYeast packet didn’t look like it had much liquid inside it, first time I used one of these. I like dry yeast better. But that’s just me. We’ll see how it does!

Update 1: added WYeast French Saision #3711 Monday night (4/28/2015). smacked pack, let it sit 3 or 4 hours…. then saw the inner pouch hadn’t been broken! #FML moment. cut it open with sanitized knife, poured it in, closed up bag, let it sit another hour and pitched it all in. So far hating these WYeast packets. First one didn’t show me any bubbling signs that I have seen in previous batches, lack of yeast cake upon opening after a few days. Status of the batch so far, not sure. The gravity currently is sitting at 1.017. Will have to take another gravity reading in a few days and see how goes it.

Update 2: Took another gravity reading on Thursday evening (5/8/2015) and the reading was down to 1.011. Also washed, steamed and then pitched one spiral of light toast French oak into the wort. Took some sips of the sample, so cloudy still but it’s getting there!

Update 3: Bottling day was on Wednesday, June 3 2015 and we got 50 12oz bottles and 3 22 oz bottles out of the batch. Also the final gravity was 1.001 or 1.002. Looks like the resulting ABV is 7.9%, looking forward to trying one of these soon!