Spelt Brett Saison

I have really been enjoying Amos Browne's blog. One of the articles talks about his spelt saison recipe. I thought I would give it a try.

I decided to use spelt flour. This was mainly because it was easy to get, and I was confident that by mixing the flour with the grain first, my BIAB system would handle the slightly stickier mash.

The plan was to pitch some brett bruxellensis from a bottle of orval after primary fermentation was underway to get a bit of brett character in the final beer.

I used 80% pale malt (Crisp, Flagon) and 20%  organic spelt flour from dove farms. I aimed for a SG of 1.045 meaning if it really attenuates to 1.002 it is 5.64% abv. I didn't want to go much lower due to concerns about lack of mouthfeel. Bittering was with fuggles at start of boil to 28 IBU. I later dry hopped with some (15g for 10L batch) mandarina bavaria. Water was adjusted with sodium chloride and gypsum to make something vaguely like one of the water profiles in farmhouse ales, although from memory I struggled to get chloride down to the right level. Mash was single infusion BIAB at 65 C.

Yeast was mangrove jacks M27 Belgian saison ale.

Yeast was pitched, and shortly after (1 day?), brett from a relatively fresh (< 6 months) bottle of orval was pitched. Beer was left for 4 weeks, signs of airlock activity finished after 3.

I made an absolute hash of bottling. Aiming for 2.6 vols of CO2 (just in case brett takes it up further)  I had to add a liter of water to make up enough liquid for how much sugar I added to the bottling bucket, then the sugar didn't all dissolve which I noticed post bottling, so I quickly dissolved the remainder in some hot water then used a pipette to dose each bottle proportionally (I was using some 500ml beer style bottles and some 750ml champagne style bottles). Plain table sugar was used. This would normally be completely fermented by brewers yeast so I wasn't worried about the brett over-carbing, since, it too, will simply use all of it. I also gave it longer than normal to complete fermentation so hopefully no bottle bombs. Orval reportedly leave it three weeks.

The beer poured a golden yellow with a weird sudsy head that lasted a few minutes. Carbonation was high with big bubbles and quite a carbonic bite. Since brewing this beer I have had a commercial lager beer with mandarina bavaria hops, and I have determined that I don't like the tangerine pithy taste. When this beer was first tasted, the thin mouthfeel from the brett combined with the (to me) slightly unpleasant fruity bitterness combined with slight brett funk made it a little bit like when one gets a little bit of sick in one's mouth after eating an orange and then running about. However, with time the hops faded and the brett became a little bit more assertive, which was better. The weather warmed up a bit too, which made the dryness of the beer more pleasant. If I was doing this beer again I would probably get rid of the later hops and maybe add some calcium chloride to try and round out the flavor a bit.

Orval Inspired Bitter and Home Roasting

I initially bought a bottle of Orval because I wanted to harvest the brett. When trying the beer I noticed the aromatics reminded me of occasions in my childhood where my parents and their friends were drinking beer. The smell, and indeed flavour, to me, was almost like the archetypal beer (indeed Michael Jackson called it a "quintessential beer"), and I wondered if I could create something a bit lower gravity with a similar aromatic profile which I suspected was mainly from the styrian golding hops and possibly a bit of crystal type malt.

I also fancied having a go at roasting some malt at home to generate some toasty notes. I am a big fan of brown malt and I've never tried amber, which is supposed to be similar, so was wondering if I could get something close. I now know, from ISBN: 9781938469121 (I think?), that the process might be subtly different, and what I created was probably more similar to biscuit malt.

There is no space in my flat for grain crushing so I buy 25Kg sacks of crushed malt which last me about a year. Most methods for home toasting suggest using uncrushed malt, one reason being that you get a more even toast. Because that option wasn't open to me I threw caution to the wind and just decided to toast the crushed malt in a cast iron pot, which I assumed would give a more even toast. I pre heated the pot in the oven and stirred the malt which was probably a few inches deep every ten minutes or so. I have heard people say they like the smell of malt. I personally find it mildly unpleasant and this process really creates a stench, think boiling wort times a thousand. It permeated my flat and the stairwell. The malt was roasted at 180 C (356 F) for 35 minutes. It was hard to see any change but comparing to some unroasted malt at the end it was definitely a darker beige.

The recipe was 65% pale (crisp, flagon variety), 10% home toasted pale, 10% caramalt (30 EBC approx), 15% syrup. Gravity  1.045. Mashed med to high.

The syrup was homemade, starting with Waitrose demerara sugar, based on some posts somewhere on  here suggesting that unrefined sugar is the best base for historical brewing syrups. A small amount of lemon juice was added (<5ml, worked out properly with some calculation but I don't think it matters much). About a cup of water was added to 250g of sugar and the whole lot was bought to the boil for a about a minute. I doubt this added any colour. The syrup slightly crystallized in the jar I was keeping it in. The sugar was added at the start of the mash along with the malt.

I didn't bother adjusting my Bristol tap water, which as it turns out, is Orval like anyway.

Hops were 24IBU of perle at 60mins. I do no chill, and adjust my hop additions by -15 minutes to account for this when calculating late hop additions, and this was a 9.3L batch in the end so 20g of bobek went in at 5mins to go for 9 IBU and 30g more were added after 5mins of cooling in the fermenter for 6 IBU. If you were chilling these would be 15 min and 5 min additions.

Yeast was "muntons premium gold" which was recommended to me by a fellow home-brewer when I complained that many of my English beers don't have enough yeast character. A slight under-pitch and use of sugar should have promoted ester production as explained by SJ.

The beer when poured was very hazy despite being crystal clear in the bottle (before the fridge). I attribute this to fairly lively carbonation stirring up the yeast and a clumsy pour. chill haze. I like bright beer, and generally enjoy hazy beer less, but I wasn't too upset here, it didn't taste yeasty and wasn't visually disgusting.

The aroma was a nice mixture of damp hops and toasted grain. The flavour was yeasty fruity (strawberry?) and toasty with a very subtle caramel sweetness. Pretty happy with how this one has worked out. I think the toasted malt and sugar definitely added some complexity, the syrup smelt like overripe tomatoes before adding to the mash and I wonder if some of the fruitiness is coming from the sugar. I think to get it more like the beer I was imagining it would be I'd need some Munich to provide richness.

This was also way less aromatic than Orval. I probably would do a dry hop next time and possibly try the other type of styrian golding. Might reduce the carbonation slightly as well. This one was nice, but I think it could also work well with less fizz.