I'm finally going to dust off the brew kettle and brew a beer -- and to top it all off I'm going to make a saison, which I've never done before. But I'm in love with this beer by Upright Brewing: http://www.uprightbrewing.com/?page_id=34

Copy/paste from the page:

Six is a dark rye beer with layered flavors including chocolate, caramel, pepper, wood, cherry and tropical fruit. It starts semi-dry and smooth and finishes fully dry and tart with a small bite from the hops. The overall balance of the Six makes it easy to pair with richly prepared meats along with many harder cheeses.

Malts: organic pale, caramel, rye, black
Unmalted: rolled rye
Hops: magnum, tettnanger

6.7% abv

I'd like to make something very close to this. It pretty much gives the malts and hops to use, and the target ABV. I've never brewed a saison so I'm not sure what yeast might be best or any special needs they have. Any tips appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

I used rolled rye in a belgian trappist single and loved it. The description sounds quite good, so I made a recipe to mimic the descriptions. French saison from Wyeast makes a beer that's fruity and spicy. I'll be sure to brew this in the next few months.

http://hopville.com/recipe/187125/belgian-specialty-ale-recipes/black-saison

That looks pretty good. What do the debittered black malt and carafa II do differently or bring differently to the beer?

To me the beer was dark brown to reddish brown, so I might cut those back a little and possibly bump up the crystal malt.

And I will have to read up on rolled rye -- I'm not familiar with it at all.

I found the rolled rye at my local health food store. It adds a nice spiciness. You can mash it like normal malt, because it has been rolled. The carafa special and debittered add a dark chocolate flavor without being too roasty/coffee/ bitter. IMO too much roasted/ black malt will make it taste like a stout.

We had about 18 brewers do saisons with some of us doing a 10 gallon split on 2 yeasts.

Everything went pretty smoothly accept for the batches on wy3724 (saison dupont) those have been brutal to finish out. I did 3711 and wlp550, both of which rocked and took me to 1.003.

I think rye would be outside the traditional style, but then again I used palm sugar.

Putting in extra sugar in general seemed to help the brews finnish. (1lb per 5gal)

Only tip I can give is give it time. If you use the Dupont strain, be prepared for it to stall. I had one go from around 1.070 to 1.020 in a month, then take another month and a half in the 95 degree garage to drop to about 1.006. It took forever, but it was well worth it.

When I think about brewing a saison I think about a couple of things: first, I think about a simple recipe that will let the spiciness of that saison yeast shine.

Second, I think about getting that beer as dry as possible. Some other posters have mentioned simple sugars, which is a great idea with saison.

Third, I think about temperature. Saison is the one style in my opinion that can really get up there in temperature and still be a great beer. Most saison yeasts are very hardy at high temps, and actually will produce some great esters at those temps. I think I got my last one to about 83 or 84 degrees in the secondary fermenter.

While your grain bill might be a little complex for a traditional saison, it still looks great. I'd say just go easy on the crystal and get that sucker dry.

i think rye would be great, used it in my saison that i split 3 ways. yet to taste them tho. also used some buckwheat. i read the farmhouse book by phil whats his name and there was some good info in there about how it this style was for the workers and there was a healthy amount of unfermentables in there that added to the body. while rye is fermentable i was using it for the spice, i think buckwheat will add nicely to the body. my batch had OG of 1.064 and going into 2ndary it was at 1.009, so it will be plenty dry.

The spiciness of the yeast is going to come through anyway.
About two years ago, I brewed an alt with the 3711, and kept it really cold. It took a while, but it did, and strong too.
You can't get rid of the spicy from the yeast.

agreed with some posts above (Robert, Eric). When I think of saison I think "damn, that yeast!". The yeast makes or breaks the beer. You really need a good strain to capture the essense of the style. And in most cases it's a PITA and takes a long time and/or needs to be fermented a lot warmer than you'd ever consider fermenting another strain.

Personally, I rather not brew another one

Oh come on Bryan, bust one out this summer. haha I love saisons. In fact, I just started reading The book "Farmhouse Ales" by (Phil Markowski) and am reminded how much I love saison. I haven't had many, but I really enjoy biere de garde too. I think I'll brew one soon.

Also, to rob: don't be afraid to ramp that temperature up man. I was just talking to a guy at the homebrew shop that leaves his saisons outside in 85 or so degree weather. This isnt' the first time I've heard this, and I wouldn't be afraid to go into the 90s even. Those saison yeasts can take it, and they'll produce some great esters.

Quote:"Everything went pretty smoothly accept for the batches on wy3724 (saison dupont) those have been brutal to finish out. "

Mine went from 1.070 to 1.045 then crawled to 1.003. 63 days in primary.

No advice other than expect weirdness. From reading Farmhouse Ales, and other sources, I'm going to try this one again over the summer and stick that sucker in my Texas garage at 95 degrees! (How do you spell smack down?!?!)

That is an odd yeast to say the least. End results were good but it took forever and a day.

FWIW: I'm not in Slim's brew group. My results were independent, yet confirming the same results.

southampton (NY) puts out a great saison, but otherwise, I'm not really a big fan of them or BdG. They're alright, but there's so much more I'd rather drink over them. Now that I'm temp controlling my fermenter directly, I might be able to do a better job, but it's still lacking appeal.

The brewshop only had one pack of 3711 yeast. SO I ended up splitting the batch, 5 gal fermented with 3711 and 5 gal fermented with WLP 565. Checked yesterday after 4 days and 3711 was down to 1.018, 565 down to 1.030. I had a space heater in there at 80 to get more of a spicy phenolic character but shut it off. Now I'm reading that more heat and time would be good to get these guys to finish down in the 1.00x range.

Now this is a thread I can endorse!

Saison has been my favorite style for many, many years and I've brewed several. I will say that for every good U.S commercial example I find, there are several that aren't very well done. I could write on and on about this, but I'll simply distill my thoughts on the style into a few easy points:

- they NEED to be quite dry, which means 1) using the right yeast strains, 2) fermenting 'em much warmer than you're probably comfortable with and 3) giving 'em time to finish properly
- contrary to what far too many breweries and homebrewers think, saisons aren't supposed to be a spice soup; they DON'T need 'em (as you should be getting that character from your yeast), but if you want to add spices, go with a very light hand; you shouldn't be able to pick out what was used
- as they should be dry and on the hoppy side, crystal malts have little-to-no place in 'em; those malts add sweetness and body, the two things that are inappropriate in saison; if you're brewing a bigger, darker saison, I could see using a touch, but otherwise, you're best to leave 'em out altogether
- they're better put into bottles as opposed to draft; they should be quite spritzy and carbonated, and it's easier to achieve this in bottled form; plus, it's easier to age 'em in bottles, IMHO
- a good dose of sugar (~10%) helps to achieve the low final gravity
- American citrusy hops work every bit as well as the more traditional Old World ones
- I love a hearty dash of rye malt to complement the hop spiciness

Okay....reading this thread got me curious. Are there any commercial varities of this style available? I live in the South and anything that would allow for high yeast temps must be explored so that I can continue to brew in the summer.

Saison Dupont is a classic example and is widely available.

thanks Robert!

I agree with MarkR - there are a lot of mediocre commercial saisons in the U.S. But when you find a good one, it is GOOD! One that I like quite a bit is Ommegang Hennepin.

I finally kegged my saison. Both finally got down to the 1.010 mark after resuspending the yeast and cranking the temp up to the mid 80s. I would have liked it drier but I waited more than my patience would allow so I kegged 'em. They tasted ok to me. I had some crystal malts in there so I'm curious if they added some unfermentables. We'll see how it ends up. Thanks all.