last thursday was the third thursday of the month, and as with all third thursdays, I headed up to culver city for pacific gravity’s monthly meeting.

• I brought along bottles of my imperial stout and vizcaino for some sensory analysis – vizcaino’s bretty/fruity aroma and golden strong characteristics were well received, and the consensus regarding the imperial stout was that lack of carbonation and high finishing gravity hindered the overall package.
• as a result, after kegging my clean portion of belgian amber and dosing the other portion with brett b, I individually opened each bottle of my imperial stout and re-yeasted them with red star premier cuvee dry wine yeast.  I contemplated trying a dry ale yeast first, but the beer’s high abv made me doubt that method’s success.  I plan on trying a bottle next week and chilling the bottles once adequate carbonation has been achieved to reduce the risk of overcarbonation.

I also got around to brewing the fourth iteration of my house saison after bottling the third batch last week.

• keeping with my previous strategy of alternating light and dark variations, I strayed slightly from last year’s recipe with a few modifications, including the use of dark, pungent liquid candi sugar and low-alpha hops early in the boil (12 gal recipe):

  • 18 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.0 SRM)	Grain	2	72.7 %
    1 lbs 8.0 oz	Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM)	Grain	3	6.1 %
    1 lbs 8.0 oz	Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM)	Grain	4	6.1 %
    1 lbs 4.0 oz	Carafa II (412.0 SRM)	Grain	5	5.1 %
    1 lbs	Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM)	Grain	6	4.0 %
    1 lbs	Candi Sugar, Dark (275.0 SRM)	Sugar	7	4.0 %
    3.00 oz	Saaz [1.00 %] – Boil 60.0 min	Hop	8	4.1 IBUs

• I also mashed higher than normal at 156F and hit my target gravity of 1.059 (14.5 brix) exactly due to a smooth sparge/lauter.  I gave my house slurry a couple days head start and then pitched a single vial of WLP566, which took off in a few hours.  after brewing this batch I came to realize that what was once a slight riff on a saison has evolved into sours somewhat comparable to blanc and banning.  as a result, after this batch has been kegged and bottled, I plan on returning to brewing a standard saison (likely with a high finisher like WLP565) with a simple post-fermentation brett addition (maybe some WLP644?).
• also, during the start of my brew day the crew from thrashlab (specifically, the subculture club derivative) stopped by to film a general homebrewing how-to as well as to interview me about my process/brewing history.  everyone involved was a consummate professional, and filming went fairly smoothly.  it was definitely neat to share my love of homebrewing and hopefully turn some more people on to the hobby.  stay tuned for a link to the final video(s), and be sure to scrutinize all minutiae and call me out on any mistakes…

Tags: house saison, imperial stout, pacific gravity, thrashlab, vizcaino

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 at 1:06 pm and is filed under beers, brewing, events, ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.