Saison du Boner

Ever hear of Saison du Buff? Well, now you have:

Partly inspired by this and partly inspired by a recent trip to Southampton Publick House and a few recent saison tastings, I figured I'd jump the gun and brew something slightly out of season and do a saison.

Here's the recipe for the 5 gallon batch:

Malt Bill

8# Pilsner Malt 74.4%

1# White Wheat Malt 9.3%

1# Munich Malt 9.3%

.75# amber candi sugar 7%

Hops

1 oz Amarillo @ 60 min

1 oz Cascade @ 10 min

1 oz Ahtanum @ 5 min

1 oz Amarillo @ 5 min

1 oz Amarillo @ turn off

Yeast

Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison

Extras

1 g Seeds of Paradise, lightly crushed @ 5 minutes in boil

5 teaspoon yeast nutrient @ 10 minutes in boil

Stats:

Expected OG: 1.062

Expected FG: 1.011

Expected ABV: 6.9%

Expected IBU (using Tinseth): 34.2

Ok, so before you crap your pants at how untraditional this is, lemme defend my choices.

First, I'm using American hops and this is going to be on the upper end of bitterness for the style. One of my favorite saisons, if not one of my favorite beers, is Jack D'Or by Pretty Things. If you've ever had it, you know it uses a good amount of American hops and comes in at 45 IBU, which is 10IBU higher than the style is supposed to be. I've also had some maltier saisons and I prefer some hops.

Saisons also aren't the best defined style, historically. Traditional saisons were brewed with whatever was around. If you are brewing according to the BJCP style guidelines, it might not work but since I'm not entering this into a competition, I'll make it how I damn well please.

Anyway, I like Amarillo hops a whole lot. Cascade is cool too. I've never brewed with Ahtanum, but its a hop used in Ithaca's Flower Power and that's a delicious beer so I'll give it a try. The heavy emphasis on the late hop additions will give it a good boost in terms of aroma without adding bitterness.

I'm excited to brew it. I'm also going to do something a bit experimental with this batch. Are you ready? Well, I am going to bottle half of the batch as you see above. The other half? Well, I'm going to transfer that to my smaller carboy and let it age on some white wine soaked oak chips and I'm gonna pitch a strain of brett to try and make a sour. That'll age until the summer when I think I'll bottle some straight up and for the rest I'll condition it on some kind of fruit... maybe blueberry, strawberry or something more traditional like raspberry.

Cheers!