Because I work for a bank, I had this Monday off for President's Day, which I took as an opportunity to do some brewing. Since I have a couple of corny kegs, I always like to keep at least one beer on tap, preferably something that goes well with a meal. Since I am a big fan of funky yeast characteristics, I had been looking to brew a saison for a while. Actually, I had a couple of saison recipes kicking around in my head: a low gravity saison, and a high-gravity saison supplemented with honey and aged with Brettanomycis. Of course, the former would work very well as a yeast starter for the latter, which is the plan I went with.
For the low-gravity saison, I was inspired to create something that would be like a British bitter--nice hop presence, easy drinking, alcohol low enough that you could put down a couple pints and still function. So, this is a bit of a hybrid style, or a mish-mash (or does that count as a bad pun when discussing beer?) style. The OG is too low for a saison, and I included biscuit and special B malts to get the sort of malt backbone that would be appropriate in a bitter (plus some flaked oats for body), but with the WLP565 strain at high temperature for maximum spicy/fruity characteristics. The hops fit with the saison profile (Styrian, Saaz) and with the bitter profile (EKG).
Anyway, I used a single infusion mash at 154º with batch sparging and then boiled for 90 minutes. My evaporation rate was a little higher than expected, so I had under 4.5 gallons at a gravity of 1.038, so I added a gallon of distilled water to push it to an OG of 1.032, which was my target. (Efficiency of 72%. I probably would have benefited from a protein rest or fly sparging, but for the gravity I was targeting, neither would have been worth the effort, IMHO.)
My primary ferment is in a plastic bucket, which I've placed in a 78º minifridge with the top off. I imagine primary will be done in a few days, at which point (if the gravity is low enough) I will keg it (except for a small portion to be bottled) and let it condition for a couple more weeks. And this weekend, I will be brewing that other, much stronger saison.
