Added the honey during primary fermentation and dry hopped on a little bit of Apollo (thought it helped the citrus element stand up). I took a portion of my honey and subbed out the 1# of D-180. Too much black malt I should admit – was hoping for something less inky at the end. I added in a touch of Crystal 120, some red wheat (head retention), and finally some de-bittered black malt. I took the same basic grist from my normal saison and swapped only a few things out. There have been lots of examples of a dark or black saison. With some odd volumes of dark malt hanging around, I decided to go dark – had some D-180 candy sugar sitting around as well, but kept the OG low – not even come near a BSG. I wanted something very different, and had read that much of the variability of farmhouse ales was really about fresh available ingredients and occasionally unusual things would find their way into the grist. Too lazy to make a new “Yeast” in BeerSmith – so ignore that element in the recipe below. AND I had just harvested some yeast from Ommegang’s Hennepin saison. Mark had actually let these roll through 90+ degrees to ferment, and came out fantastic. I also had just met Mark Schoppe at a recent Zealots meeting and tasted 4 side by side comparisons of Saison yeasts. FYI – the cherries added back in that something missing. I had just finished a crisp 10G split batch that came out too clean, no pepper or spice from the yeast, but managed to salvage by putting half of the recipe onto sour cherries. Farmhouse ales, however, are all the rage. I have been drinking a few and reading quite a bit about the history, and seldom does the past match the present. So I deal with summer brewing session saisons. Hard to pick a first recipe for a brewing blog, but here it is – summer in all it’s sweltering Texas glory.
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