Gyle 19 - AG Red Chinook Saison

I was going to have a quiet day, I did a bit of reading, the usual. What I was reading was making me want to brew. I finally decided at about 6:30 this evening to start heating up some strike water and come up with a recipe. The recipe I decided on (at such late notice) was a very simple saison, single hopped with Chinook.

This is a turning point, and a special new-to-me brew as I decided, after some reading, that it would be massively late-hopped. As a first to me, it would also not be dry hopped (I'm a little scared). Another first was that to help with the potential flavours of the late hopping, I would use pelletised hops for the 5 minute, and flameout hop additions.

 Malts

5000g Marris Otter

100g CaraAroma

Hops

8g Whole Cone Chinook @ 60 min

10g Whole Cone Chinook @ 20 min

15g Whole Cone Chinook @ 15 min

25g Whole Cone Chinook @ 10 min

50g Pelletised Chinook @ 5 min

50g Pelletised Chinook @ Flameout

Overall for the mash, I used 9.26g of Gypsum (3.2g into 12.8 litres of mash liquor, and 6.06g into 24.2 litres of sparge liquor) and 5.35g of Calcium Chloride (1.85g into the mash, and 3.5g into the sparge).

The mash went particularly well and I got lovely clear wort out of it, obviously this was made very cloudy by the use of pelletised hops, the wort was so clear that it did seem a shame to use them, but I’d set out to do so, so I carried on sticking with the plan.

As the mash started, I got the saison yeast out of the fridge and put it on top of the mash tun so that it could start to warm up to room temperature so that it would be ready to pitch later on (this was a tip given to me by @broadfordbrewer ).

I decided to do the mash a little warmer than I have been doing, mainly as I didn't have as much malt in there, and wasn't trying to hit such a high OG, so for this mash I went for a temp of 65 degrees.

I started the sparge and after collecting about 7 litres from the slow run-off, I recirced the entire run-off back into the mash tun with the sparge water.

Once I’d collected another 10 litres from the mash, I started the boil, and then kept adding more wort to the ever heating boil as it collected from the mash.

There was a problem with the boil section as the kettle sprung a leak. I had to act quickly to stop quite a bit of the now-boiling wort from spilling everywhere. So I used foil and gaffer tape, this was later backed up with some packing tape on the outside to try and keep as much in. I also ended up having to boil in three separate pans to take some of the pressure off the hole that was foil covered, and gaffer taped up.

Luckily, the hops were already weighed out, so there was nothing else to worry about when trying to fix the leak (albeit temporarily).

Ten minutes before the end of the boil, a dash of Irish Moss was added to help coagulate the proteins and clear out the wort (not so easy with the sheer amount of hop crud). Once the 60 minute boil was concluded, all hops added (the pelletised hops added a bit of ferocity to the boil, and also a cloudiness to the nice clear wort).

After the cooling, I ran the wort through a sieve to collect up as much of the hops as possible (the whole cone hops acting as a bit of a strainer for the pelletised hops) following this I double strained through tights to get as much as possible of the pellet hops.

Then time to pitch in the room temperature saison yeast that I had got back after a brew a few weeks ago. I started to clean down and I could hear a small amount of bubbling and see positive pressure in the airlock after about half an hour. That could just be moving it though, so the proof will be tomorrow morning if it's fully krausened and fermenting well.

The wort is a lovely red colour at the moment, and it tastes pretty spectacular.

With an aimed efficiency of 70% I hoped for an OG of 1.044 (I had said I would attempt a lower gravity beer), I actually achieved an initial gravity of 1.045, so that makes me very happy that even with almost disastrous occurrences, I manage to get decent efficiency.

As said, this will not have any dry hopping (I want to see the effect of the heavy late-hopping) so it will be quite interesting. I’ll obviously keep you informed as to what happens.