AG#41 – Saison au Jasmine

This is probably the last saison I’m going to do for the rest of the year. I’ve done a fair few at this stage and while I wanted to get some value out of the two vials of yeast that went into all of these saisons, it’s now time to mix things up a bit.

I’ve always liked the aroma of jasmine – it reminds me of long holidays in Thailand. I figured a floral, fruity, spicy saison would be a great base beer to put jasmine into.

Recipe Specifications

Boil Size: 19.12 l
Post Boil Volume: 16.12 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 15.00 l
Bottling Volume: 13.50 l
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 11.1 EBC
Estimated IBU: 12.1 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 45.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 46.7 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients

2.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 –
4.700 kg Bohemian Pilsner Malt, Weyermann (4.0 EB Grain 2 85.5 %
0.300 kg Munich Malt (17.7 EBC) Grain 3 5.5 %
0.300 kg Wheat Malt, Bel (3.9 EBC) Grain 4 5.5 %
0.200 kg Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 EBC) Sugar 5 3.6 %
15 g Styrian Goldings [3.00 %] – Boil 60.0 mi Hop 6 9.5 IBUs
0.32 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 7 –
20 g Styrian Goldings [3.00 %] – Boil 10.0 mi Hop 8 2.5 IBUs
11.00 g Jasmine Flowers (Boil 0.0 mins) Flavor 9 –
1.0 pkg Belgian Saison I Ale (White Labs #WLP565 Yeast 10 –
1.0 pkg Belgian Saison II Yeast (White Labs #WLP Yeast 11 –

Mash Schedule: Bubbles Small Batch BIAB Mash
Total Grain Weight: 5.500 kg
Saccharification Add 22.36 l of water at 74.9 C 68.0 C 60 min

16/08/2015 – Not the best brew day I’ve ever had. It was a bit spur of the moment, and I didn’t really bother with a recipe, just winging it by using the Lemon Saison recipe as a guide. I replaced the Sorachi Ace hops in that recipe, which have a high alpha rating, with Styrian Goldings, which are a very low alpha hop. I’m going to do a hop tea of Sorachi Ace to try to bring the IBUs up from 12! I also had much higher efficiency than expected, 1.066 versus 1.055. This is because I never adjusted my brewhouse efficiency after the last time I did a BIAB brew. Plus I had lots of spills and the brew day was just a drag in general. I’m not sure how much jasmine flavour I got out of 11g of flowers added at flameout, but I might have to do a jasmine tea when I rack this to secondary.

23/08/2015 – Disaster with this, I was racking it to secondary because I need the yeast cake for another diaster of a brew, and there’s a serious bang of fusels off it. Though I’ve just realised writing this that it’s only been in the fermenter a week. However, I did notice that the fermentation was far too fast on it, with the yeast having dropped after 24-36 hours. There might be enough residual job to finish the job in secondary, but I think this might be a lost batch. I’ll leave it a week or two and then have a taste.

30/08/2015 – Dumped. Still tastes shitty. Could be the jasmine giving the off flavours or could be the hop tea I added. Whatever the cause, I’m not wasting bottles or my time on this batch. A thankfully rare occurrence for me to dump a batch.