#1 Saison 10Jul08

I never cared much for beer until I started traveling to Europe more often, and visiting Belgium in 2002 was a revelation of sorts. It's interesting that Germany and Belgium are neighbors, because they take polar opposite approaches to beermaking. Germany is famous for their "Reinheitsgebot"- a beer purity law originating in 1516 that stated German beer could only have three ingredients: water, hops, and barley (they didn't understand that bacteria did the fermenting back then). In Belgium, if yeast can ferment it, or if it might be a tasty addition (e.g. fruit, spices), it's still beer. Until the Reinheitsgebot was repealed in 1987, a wheat beer was illegal to sell in Germany as beer! Those whacky Germans!

The first beer I brewed was a Belgian Saison, my favorite style. A light (by Belgian standards) and dry beer, but with a lot going on in the flavor department. I brew the partial mash method (a marriage of all-grain and extract brewing). Details of my partial method procedure are in a separate posting.

Recipe:
4 lb Dingemans (Belgian) pilsner
0.5 lb 9L Crystal malt
0.5 lb Carapils
3 lb Pilsen light dry malt extract
1 oz East Kent Goldings (plugs, 5.6%) @ 60 min
1 oz Styrian Goldings (pellets, 2%) @ 5 min
White Labs #568 (Saison Blend), fermented @ 80F
5 oz corn sugar added before bottling

Notes: Fermentation was complete in 4 days. After 10 days, racked to secondary to clarify for 3 weeks @ 72F. Being my first beer, this took me forever to brew and I forgot to take an original gravity sample when I finshed @ ~1am. However, I didn't need an o.g. sample to know my mash efficiency was low once I tasted it. The beer was tasty, but very light. Considering it was summer, not such a bad thing. The flavor and aroma were nice. I was very disappointed with the head and head retention, and made some adjustments in my second beer.