Cooking with Beer: Chocolate Stout Cake

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Tis the saison... to bottle.

So, I finally got around to bottling the saison. I lost so much volume from the craptastic brew day that I only ended up with one case of 500ml bottles and enough to fill one pilsner glass to see what its tasting like:


Granted, its tough to tell exactly how it will taste when its served a little cold and after its carbonated, but I do like the color. Its much better than how it looked in taster glasses. As for taste, it has some definite fruity elements, like apple and pear, some tropical fruit from the hops, and some pepper from the seeds of paradise. A little sweet, so I'm thinking maybe next time I brew a saison I'll pitch a different yeast strain to finish off to help dry it out... but maybe carbonation will help make it taste drier.


I used the flipper top bottles because saison doesn't seem appropriate when bottled in normal 12 oz bottles or bombers and I don't have enough 750ml bottles to bottle the batch. I'm going to cellar it for a few weeks before popping it open to see how it is.


The handwritten label on the case just has the ingredients, brew date, bottle date, etc on it so I'll know what's in the bottles if I end up leaving some down there for a few months.

Also, checked on the Citra DIPA and it has a good krausen formed already so fermentation is nice and underway! I'm excited for that beer!

Cheers!

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