Recipe: Spring Saison, the Return of Dupont

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.  Well, what if life doesn’t hand you lemons?  What if you don’t care for lemonade?  What then?  What if life has lead you down the road of trying to open a Brett only brewery and then to the end of the road whence you realize it isn’t going to happen?  What do you make with that?  You make a Saison with your favorite strain that happens to not be Brett.  That’s right, I decided I needed to apologize to me great friend Dupont for abandoning him for so long.  And the reward is wonderful.  I hadn’t been this excited to brew in over a year.  The beer has been on tap less than a week and my wife is already telling me to brew it again.

I found my inspiration in one of my very first Saison recipes, the one that ended up winning second in Belgian/French ales 7 months later.  It was a beautiful bouquet of spicy and floral hops, pepper, lemon, citrus, and mild Brett funk from the addition of Orval dregs to the bottles, with a dry finish and spritzy carbonation.  I modeled this recipe after the first.  Then on brewday… life happened.  I was only going to use a 10% each Wheat, Vienna, and Oats, on a base of Pils, but I was short on Pils and had almost no Oats.  I upped the Vienna and Wheat to offset the missing grains, and the beer still turned out great.  I also had a small issue with my cold crash creating a vacuum in my fermenter and sucking in air when I went to draw a sample.  So far I am not getting any issues with flavor from it either.  So glad to have a beer like this on tap again, especially as the temperatures warm, the trees bloom, and the yard work beckons.  Rebrew scheduled for National Homebrew Day.

OG 1.041

FG 1.005

ABV 4.7%

IBU 31

SRM 5

75 mins mash @ 145

38% Pilsner Malt

35% Vienna Malt

14% Dark Wheat

6% Belgian Aromatic

6% Acid Malt

3% Flaked Oats

Calcium Sulfate

60 min boil

60 Nugget

25 Hallertaur

10 Tettnang

FO Hallertaur, Tettnang, Citra

2 weeks @ 80+

90% Belgian Saison

10% French Saison

Keg 1 – Straight @ 3.2vols CO2

Keg 2 – Orval Dregs added, aging in garage