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.

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.

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…