Table Saison II

I brewed a low gravity saison in early April and it didn't turn out very well. There were a number of problems both in recipe design and during the brew day. I hate to drain pour a good beer, but this wasn't turning into a good beer so no harm, no foul.

When designing the recipe for the first Table Saison, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. I went overboard with that idea and used only pilsener malt for the grist. Now, for a higher gravity saison like Saison duPont, which purportedly uses 100% pilsener, that works. For a beer with a starting gravity of 1.038, however, I ended up with a thin, watery mess with no body.

The revised recipe (really a whole new recipe all together) has some Belgian pale malt for depth, wheat, and Carapils for body. I also added Styrian Goldings and decided to go with Wyeast 3711 - French Saison.

Table Saison II

OG 1.041 FG 1.002 ABV 5.1% IBU ~26 SRM 3.4

Assumed Efficiency: 70%
Target Volume: 7.75 gal
Target PBG: 1.030
Target OG: 1.036
Total Grain: 9.0 lbs.

39.0% - 3.52 lbs. Castle Pilsener
39.0% - 3.52 lbs. Belgian Pale Malt
13.7% - 1.23 lbs. Weyermann Wheat Malt
08.3% - 0.75 lbs. CaraPils

2.00 oz. Czech Saaz (4.0% AA) @ 50 min.
1.00 oz. Styrian Goldings (2.6% AA) @ Flame out

1.00 tablet Whirlfloc @ 10 min.
0.50 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient @ 10 min.

Wyeast 3711 - French Saison

50% Carbon Filtered Waco, 50% Distilled

Mash at 154

Notes:
Brewed on 16 June 2011 by myself

Mashed for 60 minutes at 154 @ pH ~5.2. Had to add 1/4 tsp phosphoric acid to adjust pH

Collected 7.5 gal of 1.035 wort (mash efficiency 78.4%). Overshot target preboil gravity by 5 points. Need to adjust anticipated mash efficiency on low gravity beers to around 75%.

Removed .25 gal wort and added .5 gal filtered water for 7.75 gal of 1.032 wort

Boiled for 90 minutes and yielded ~6.12 gal of 1.041 wort (evaporation rate 14%). Usually average 11-12% evaporation, don't know what happened. Could have diluted with distilled water to adjust gravity, but decided to leave it.

Chilled to 70 degrees F and pitched smack pack of WY3711 without starter. Shook for ~2 minutes to aerate. Let free rise to 78 degrees F

22 June 2011 - Moved to fireplace. Ambient temperature ~75 degrees F.

30 June 2011 - Gravity 1.002. Bottled 4.6 gal of 75 degrees F beer with 4.28 oz table sugar for a target of 2.5 vol CO2. Yielded 19 12oz and 2 750ml bottles. Had trouble capping some 12 oz bottles (wider rim on Hacker-Pschorr bottles?) and didn't have larger size caps on hand for the rest of the 750ml bottles (Bruery bottles). Ended up dumping about 2.25 gal.