Split Batch: Classic Dupont Inspired + French Saison with Hallertau Blanc and Nelson Sauvin

The search for my ideal Saison continues.

Previous brews: Omega Saisonstein and Saison Yeast Comparison with Bootleg Biology Saison Parfait and East Coast Yeast Saison Brasserie.

I haven’t settled on a favorite saison yeast yet. My past brews have been good, but they didn’t wow me in the yeast department. This time around I’m going to try two of the classics: WY3711 French Saison, and the commercial Dupont strains WY3724 and WL565.

Michael Tonsmeire’s Saison ‘Merican has been on my “recipes to try” list for a while. The combination of saison yeast, moderate funkiness, and IPA-like hopping sounds enticing.

I’ll be following the recipe/process pretty much as written for my first attempt at this beer.

Bootleg Biology Saison Parfait vs East Coast Yeast Saison Brasserie (ECY08)

I’m planning to brew a few traditional saisons this year, with the hope to home in on something tasty to submit to a competition this fall.

Today, I’ll be trying a couple of new-to-me saison yeasts to see which I like better. Last year I brewed a similar batch with Omega Saisonstein’s Monster. I’ll try to make some comparisons to that from memory as well.

For yeast choice, I took some inspiration from Drew Beechum’s great Guide to Saisons and Saison Yeasts. He says ECY08 is his favorite for a classic saison. Bootleg’s Saison Parfait seems less talked about, but I like Bootleg so I thought I’d give it a try.

Today’s brew is going to be a pale beer/wine hybrid.

In the past, my approach for combining wine and beer has been to blend finished commercial wine into my beers at a rate between one cup, and a whole bottle in five gallons of beer. Results have been good, but a bit on the subtle side. Today I want to try to make something more wine forward – a real beer/wine hybrid instead of just a beer with a little bit of wine in it.

Whole grapes would be great for this, but that’s a large and expensive purchase. I’m going to need some planning and confidence when I do finally buy a 5 gallon pail of frozen grapes.

Instead of whole grapes, for this batch I’m going to add the undiluted contents of a one gallon (~5 bottles) wine kit a few days into primary.

I’ve been on a bit of a saison kick lately, starting mixed fermentation batches in April and May. Those are still bulk aging with probably a few months left to go before bottling. In the meantime, I feel like experimenting with a quicker 100% Saccharomyces saison.

I’m going to try out a new (to me) yeast for this brew, Omega Saisonstein’s Monster (OLY-500). It’s a hybrid strain, bred from Belgain and French saison parents.

I came across this yeast in Union’s Tart Saison, and liked it enough that I thought it was worth a try at home.

Omega says:

“[Saisonstein] is versatile, aromatic and attenuative with a silky mouthfeel. It excels in high gravity and it ferments more reliably and thoroughly than its parents. It is spicy, complex, tart, dry and crisp with some bubblegum character present from its Belgian parent, and more fruit and fewer phenolics than its French parent.”

This test batch won’t be as tart as Union’s. Theirs was definitely soured somehow, but I couldn’t find a firm answer. This beer will use a simple recipe with just the Saisonstein’s Monster to let the yeast show what it can do.

One of my favorite styles these days is mixed fermentation tart saison. Earlier in the year I made my first attempt at brewing one myself. For that beer, I blended about 20% kettle soured berliner weisse to a saison that had brett, but no souring bacteria added. It isn’t finished yet, but from some gravity samples I think it’s going to end up being tasty, but not as tart as I expected from my blending tests.

For my second go at the style, I’m going to use a full range of brett and souring bacteria. To hopefully get a light tartness instead of full-on souring, I’m going to mash low and wait until a few days into fermetation before adding the sour bugs.

Update: After some intermediate samples I decided this beer could use some adjuncts to make things a bit more interesting. On the theme of native North American ingredients, I’m going to split the beer onto cranberries (cooked down with some red wine), blueberries, and local honey*. I’ll bottle what remains as-is.

This batch continues the deep dive I’ve been taking into mixed fermentation brewing over the last 6 months. I have a bunch of sours in the pipeline now and I’d like to get some funky, non-sour, brett beers going. I brewed my first brett saison a few weeks ago. This will be my second attempt in the broad style of funky saison.

Watching the 10 year retrospective from The Mad Fermentationist’s yearly dark saison project was inspirational. I’m hoping to keep up my own similar series. I think I’ll probably take inspiration from Mike and friends the first couple years, and then strike out with my own experimental brews as I get more comfortable with this style of funky brewing.

One of the standout beers from that tasting was year four’s American Farmhouse Currant Dark Saison. I’m going to brew that recipe for the first shot at this style.

Vitus Vinifera is the scientific name for the species that contains most varieties of wine grapes.

This “Saison Vinifera” will blend funky tart saison, oak, and wine.

A large portion of my homebrewing over the last six months has been focused on trying to emulate the great mixed fermentation beers coming out of my favorite local brewery, Sapwood Cellars. Two of those beers were delicious tart saisons that they released in fall 2019:

No Beginnings was a pale saison with Brettanomyces, aged in Sauvignon Blanc wine barrels.

I’d be willing to bet that First Blush started life as a similar base beer to No Beginnings, but it was fermented with chardonnay pomace, and finished on whole Cabernet Franc grapes. It is rosé in appearance and the flavor has a unique light, tart fruitiness.

My plan is to brew a batch of funky pale saison, split it half in secondary, and see how close to each of these I can get