Friday, May 8, 2015

Brewery Trial Recipe: Saison 1.0


Saisons were designed to be light, crisp, dry, refreshing beers that you could crush during yard work.  They were truly the original lawn-mower beer.  When doing my research for what beers to have in rotation for the brewery, I saw that a lot of brewers have a beer that is designed for this purpose.  Most are Blonde Ales or Wheat Ales, others are a Pils or Helles of some sort, still a few more run with a Kolsch or Cream Ale.  The thing that all of these beers have in common is not only color and sessionability, but the lower flavor punch factor.  But of course I am not aiming for low flavor punch, their is a reason why the name is End of Silence and the Tag-Line is Let The Yeast Speak!  I want it loud.  So I went for loud with this little beer.  I wanted a depth to the malt so the Vienna is a little higher than other beers in the rotation, and the hopping is high enough to get a nice burst under the complexity of the yeast esters and phenols.  A light hand of spicing adds a nice layer in there too, just enough to help the yeast sing, but not overpower it.  Next iteration will get a little more sugar to drive the FG down a few more points, dry it out some more, and boost the ABV up to the desired 4.5% ABV.