Brudi BräuBrewday at Brudi Bräu and I'll be testing the Braumeister with a Saison today.
The ultimate summer pinter! And very forgiving if I don't get the mash efficiency right on the new system 😅
I haven't made a Saison in a while. The first one I made was essentially a batch to get rid of some leftover ingredients. It blew my mind and I made it a couple of times after that. Since then, Fermentis has moved production of their Saison yeast to Mexico, which is kind of anti-spirit when I try to make a farmhouse ale from somewhat local ingredients. I found the yeast manufacturer WHC Lab who produces in Ireland which is at least in the EU. So today I'll also check them out.
Saison is also a great style for beginners. Lots of room for interpretation in this style. The ingredient bill can be super easy. No complicated processes necessary.
As Thandi from the Beer Ladies Podcast put it: It's just a Pale Ale.
With diastatic yeast, which is a bit different from regular ale yeast. But once you know what that's all about, it is super easy to make a Saison.
I'll be going for the classic interpretation: 4-5% ABV., pale, dry, somewhat hoppy, super refreshing.
The craft beer movement has produced a lot of interpretations that are either super strong or fruited or soured. That's cool, I just prefer to keep it simple and classic.
The Braumeister is heating up.
I have to say, after 10 years of manual fumbling with knobs and measuring the temperature, it feels super weird to have a device that's all "64°C? Okay, I gotchu! Go grab some coffee! Whirrr!". 😅
I mashed in with 2kg of Pilsner Malt. I suppose now that I have a somewhat standard-ish setup, it makes sense to give actual weights instead of just percentages with the grain bill.
Anyway, as I said: My Saison is going to be a simple summer refresher so there's no need for a complicated grain bill. Braumeister says that around 2.4kg make a wort with 12°P. I am aiming for 10°P because Saison yeasts are brutal when it comes to final gravity. 2kg will hopefully get me there.
I'll go with my standard mashing schedule:
* 30 minutes at 63°C
* 30 minutes at 70°C
* 15 minutes at 78°C
It works with my malts and I used it all the time with the old system so I should get somewhat comparable results.
I made a good Saison once with an infusion mash at 65°C for an hour and some added flaked wheat. If you don't want to do step mashes that's a great cheat code.
I lautered and sparged the wort with four liters of warm water. No idea what the boil-off rate of this thing is but I guess we'll find out at the end of the boil phase.
And I think my favorite feature of the Braumeister is the fact that all the mashing gear can go into the dishwasher 😍
For hops I'm using 40g of wild hops that my father-in-law grew.
Yes, using hops that were grown in the garden of a farmhouse is what makes this Saison a true farmhouse ale. That's how farmhouses work 😅
Also that's quite a lot of hops but recently I wasn't happy with the hop utilization and bitterness. Don't know if that's a side effect of using hop bags or if we harvested the cones to soon but I have so much of the stuff I can just use a ridiculous amount.
Cooling the wort was a breeze this time. That cooling jacket was super fast and gave me the space to do my very first whirlpool. That gave me super clear wort. After I cooled it to room temperature I let it splash into the fermenter for oxygenation and moved that to the Ferminator which handles the last couple of degrees until pitching temperature.
I reached pitching temperature of 20°C pretty quickly and pitched a packet of WHC Farmhouse Vibes dry yeast. This is a diastatic yeast which means that it produces an enzyme that can process sugars that regular ale yeasts cannot handle. As a result, this yeast will probably take three weeks to get to FG but it will probably be 0.5°P instead of 2.5°. The resulting beer is bone dry and super refreshing.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Right now I'll wait for the fermentation to begin.
OG is 11ish °P. This is a bit higher than anticipated which means that the final beer will have around 5% ABV rather than 4. That's all right. Still pretty refreshing.
And now the question that nobody asked: How good is the Braumeister?
It was a very smooth brewday. There wasn't even one "OH SHIT I MESSED THAT UP!" moment and I usually have a couple of those. Cleaning was a breeze. I was afraid that the pipes and the pump would be a nightmare, but they are pretty much self-cleaning. And the fact that I can just put the mashing gear into the dishwasher is a HUGE timesaver.
All in all the process felt less involved than usual. But also far less exhausting…
… which is exactly what I was hoping for. With the old system, I liked the brewdays but at their end I only wanted to take a hot bath and go to bed. With the Braumeister I feel like I could make another batch.
It's a great system. You can tell that unlike my old system it was engineered for brewing.
Nobody needs that to make great beer. But it does make the brewday very easy.
To the point where it freaked me out because I was expecting something to go wrong 😅
Mute Dog Brewing@brudibrau awesome, glad it worked so well for you.
What volume of wort did you make?
@Mutedog 10 Liters. That's the sweet spot for me where bottling days don't suck too badly 😅
@brudibrau ahh, cool. I thought it looked like a smaller than 'standard' batch size.
Filling fewer bottles definitely makes bottling less awful. I solved the issue by filling 750s, LOL
@Mutedog Definitely an option for everything "Belgian" 🤔
@brudibrau that is mostly what I brew, though I have some 750s of Sahti right now as well.
@Mutedog Sahti is that Finnish farmhouse ale, right?
750ml bottles sound totally appropriate for that.
I just wouldn't make a 750ml bottle of something like Schwarzbier. That reminds me too much of crappy German brewpubs 😆
@brudibrau ha, the second beer I brewed was a schwarzbier. I'd happily drink a 750 of it
@Mutedog Absolutely, it's a very pintable style!
But there is this kind of German brewpub that's all like "Oh look we are super traditional, our copper brewing kettle is right in the middle of the pub, we have hops all over the place and you can have traditional German dishes with your beer". Their beer is on tap and they sell big bottles for home consumption. The beer is almost always on an "I can do that better" level.
Will@brudibrau
I was curious about the ease of cleaning the bits and pieces.
I was curious about the ease of cleaning the bits and pieces.
@scandigonian Yes, me too! I was very pleasantly surprised.
Fun-sized tiger dad@brudibrau What's your % efficiency, or just your initial liquor volume so I can calculate it? Seems pretty damn high.
Also double-crushed and unfiltered supremacy. A fussy Saison is probably a crappy Saison...I knew how bad my first was. Can only imagine how good yours will be!
@istences Uhhh... I haven't calculated that. I started out with 12l of water and 2kg of Pilsner Malt. Added four more liters for sparging and boiled that to about 10l of wort. Does that help you? 😅
@brudibrau Good enough for a quick estimate! Somewhere in the mid 70s, certainly at homebrewing goal level. Have a feeling you'll have to factor in the slightly increased efficiency moving forward with the tighter temperature control. Will be curious if the number is similar with a pure simple infusion.
@istences Definitely, with the old system I was somewhere in the mid-50s. I never payed much attention to this but the Braumeister can only process 2.8kg of malt per batch, so it's good to know that I seem to get more out of it now.
The batch of Pilsner Malt I have right now is totally suited for a single step mash. I really should give this a try as well... 🤔