Petite saison rebrew tasting notes

Setting up for the tasting.

With this batch of petite saison I wanted to work out yeast blend ratios. There were 4 treatments total:
A) 70% Wyeast 3724, 30% Wyeast 3711
B) 90% Wyeast 3724, 10% Wyeast 3711
C) % Wyeast 3724, % Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse, % Wyeast 3711
D) 90% Wyeast 3724, 10% Wyeast 3711 (though at a lower pitching rate than the above treatment) with additions of Yeast Bay Lochristi Brett blend and Wyeast 5223 Lactobacillus brevis

To mildly confuse things, I had labeled the bottles of treatment A 60/40 blend and the bottles of treatment B 80/20 blend based on what I though I did during blending, but as I found out from calculating my blends it turned out to be about 70/30 and 90/10 respectively. Through tasting these beers on their own I had formed some general opinions of how I felt about them and how they compared but in order to really figure out what the blend ratio did I needed them side by side. So I set up a somewhat blind tasting. I knew the beers - the three 'clean' (no brett/lacto) treatments form above plus my previous batch of petite saison, leaving out the brett and lacto petite rebrew treatment (D from above). And I poured them myself so I knew a bit about appearance. But then they were re-arranged and arbitrarily numbered for me given to me a minute or two later.

From tasting these beers individually while knowing what they were (and maybe pouring them, though with the exception of the previous batch with a different grist and therefore color, the differentiating characters were mostly taste and aroma based) I was able to correctly identify the different blends but it ended up being hard to determine which was the 90/10 blend and which had Wallonian Farmhouse. They were identifiably different but not necessarily in a way that I could pin to the yeast blends. I am not very familiar with Wallonian Farmhouse at this point and that probably contributed.

The poured glasses. As you can see there are some visual differences

Glass #5 (later revealed to be treatment A from above, the 70/30 blend)

Aroma: Peachy and floral with mild lime stand out. This one has more green fruit (in a slightly under-ripe way). There is a nice minerally character that is pleasant. This has a mild peppery spice and mild apple and it is more herbal than the other glasses

Appearance: Large white head, great retention, nice lacing, clear brilliant copper

Taste: Tangy lime, thinner flavor than the others with sour and green fruit. It has a dry finish and comes across medium-bitter. Overall the flavor is green and under-ripe fruit forward with low pepper.

Mouthfeel: fluffy light body with high fine carbonation, the carbonation feels a bit higher than the other blends and the body may be a bit thinner, but that might be influenced by carbonation.

Overall Impression: 3711 beers have an identifiable character to me that I would describe as green slightly under-ripe fruit with yeast. I know that's sort of a poor description but I don't really know how to convey the flavor. Either way that is what I identify with 3711, and this beer has more of that than the others. From that I was able to identify it as the 70/30 blend. It was the most 'green' and had less peach and orange citrus. There was a nice tang and spice but I want more 3724 flavor in the balance overall.

Glass #12 (later revealed to be treatment C from above, the blend with Wallonian Farmhouse)

Aroma: There is more 3724 character overall and the beer is more doughy/bready with mildly tangy citrus and tropical fruit (like mango). The aroma has a bit of a character I associated with stressed 3724. It has a sweeter aroma and is more tart than the others.

Appearance: Medium head, lower than #5, the head is a bit chunkier, brilliantly clear pale copper

Taste: Tangy citrus fruit, unique, peach, doughy/bready, unique tropical fruit in this treatment. 3724 character is in there but it is less identifiable than in other treatments, it comes across crisper than #9 (which might be influenced by the tangyness). Nice but it could use a bit more hop character.

Mouthfeel: Fluffy body, nice high fine carbonation

Overall Impression: Great citrus and tangy fruit. The character is a bit like what I got out of a saison brewed with Logsdon Seizoen dregs a while back (sidenote, this Logsdon dregs beer was what I sent to the first round of the 2013 NHC which came out a fair bit different from what I sent to the final round). This version is a bit more reigned in than that Logsdon version. The fruit is unique and different from what I usually get. I think this is the Wallonian Farmhouse version and #9 is the 90/10 but it is hard to tell.

Glass #3 (later revealed to be the previous batch of petite saison)

Aroma: Floral, fruity candy, pear stands out. The classic Dupont aroma is there. There is nice malt and a stronger noble hop character but also some slight oxidation.

Appearance: Slightly paler and more of a golden color than the other three glasses. Large white head with great retention and nice lacing.

Taste: This has more of the classic Dupont floral character with a touch of pleasant sulfur. It has a dry finish with nice hop charatcer and a light tangyness. The hop flavor in this one is good and is more in line with what I am looking for out of this recipe.

Mouthfeel: Fluffy/creamy body with high fine carbonation. Less tangy than #12. The hops contribute nicely to the body.

Overall Impression: The other glasses are missing this hop flavor and I like the Dupont-esque mild sulfur. The fruit is slightly more restrained in this and I really like that. It is still pronouncedly fruity but is a bit more refined. Maybe over-expressed fruit is what I mean when I talk about stressed 3724 character. At it's prime this version was the best. I may still prefer this malt bill to the malt bill I used in the re-brew.

Glass #9 (later revealed to be treatment B from above, the 90/10 blend)

Aroma: This version is the funkiest and is seems complex than the others. Strong peach and 3724 character. There is a nice doughy character in the aroma. There is a bit of stressed 3724 with strong floral. A bit of sharpness almost like what cheddar has and if I didn't know what went in here I could believe that there was some mild Brettanomyces.

Appearance: Very similar to #12 with a low white head and good retention.

Taste: Strong fruityness dominated by the classic peach character I associate with 3724 and a mild green fruit that I associate with 3711. There is a touch of brett-like funk and doughyness and a touch of sulfur in the finish (though it is less smooth and pleasant than what I find in Dupont saisons). Nice citrus fruit (tangerine) and floral. Nice malt character but I want more hop flavor and bitterness.

Mouthfeel: Great creamy/fluffy body. High fine carbonation. I want more hop character.

Overall Impression: The darker color in glasses #5, #12 and #9 compared to #3 is nice but I'm not sure the darker malt bill benefits the flavor. Maybe I'll go back to the original malt bill. And if I decide I want the darker color maybe I'll add a bit of Carafa-type malt for color adjustment. The perception of funk is nice here and I'm not sure where it is coming from. It could be that something else got in, and if so it's pleasant, but I'm not convinced about that. It could also be a combination of the tangyness, malt and slight sulfur. In the 4 tasting this is my preference, but only slightly.

The revealed identities of the saisons.

Closing thoughts: Overall these were very similar. that may not be reflected in my notes because I was looking for differences. Especially the 90/10 and Wallonian Farmhouse bottles. With what remained in those bottles I compared them head to head and may slightly prefer the Wallonian Farmhouse in a 2-way tasting. I should redo a 2-way tasting to test that. The WF batch is slightly more assertive than the 90/10 due to the tangy citrus and tropical fruit. One theory I have for this at the moment is that in a 4-way tasting I might be tasting more for what I think is the best saison for my palate but in a 2-way tasting I might choose the beer that stands out pleasantly. Looks like I have to do a new 2-way for these two.

Dark English Mild

Heating up the strike water

There's been a bit of delay in my getting a post up on this blog, but the Hors Catégorie facebook page has been getting lots of regular brewing updates including a nearly 70 gallon brewday of saison which is now waiting to go into a 60 gallon wine barrel, a 10 HL batch of saison which was a collaboration with a local brewery, blending of sour barrel aged beers, and a string of the posts about the general saison-related stuff I find myself doing on a weekly (if not daily) basis. But I finally got a bit of time to put up a new post. I've been brewing a lot of saisons lately and although I love saison, I was ready to try out something different for a batch or two. Having to prepare 10 gallons of old ale for a barrel aging project and a mistake for one of my yeasts in a shipment of an East Coast Yeast order (which fortunately was corrected as soon as possible) meant that I had a couple different English strains around. I like having a nice malty but easy drinking beer here and there, and as with my saison brewing, lately I've been focusing on trying to make lower alcohol beers with great flavor. So a dark English mild was a natural choice.

My ground malt and the dark grains cold steeping

I found a dry toasty/mildly astringent character that I don't really care for in some of my previous batches of mild and I also find it with some commercial milds I've tried. It is kind of like the flavor of sunflower seed husks. While I don't find it awful, this flavor (which I think may be enhanced by the thinness of the beer) is something I am looking to avoid in milds. I wanted to try ways to get a darker malt character without that so with this batch I tried cold-steeping my grains - my first use of this technique. In brief, the theory behind/advantage of this is that you don't pull out as many rougher flavors like tannins with the cooler temperatures which still getting the color and much of the dark malt flavor out. The liquid you get from this can then be added back at late in the boil, to the hot wort, or straight to chilled wort or the carboy. There are plenty of places to learn more about cold steeping of grains, such as the article by Chris Bible in the October 2014 issue of BYO magazine.

I cold steeped my grains in a 1 qt mason jar, which was an excellent vessel for this sort of thing. The only downside I found in my approach was that my water to grain ratio was way too thick and as a result of this I did not get very complete extraction. I would have needed multiple mason jars for the amount of dark grain I used. In subsequent brews with less dark grain a 1 qt mason jar has worked great, and when I use this much grain again I'll split it into 3 or so mason jars. So anyway, the day before brewday I started cold steeping. With this batch I decided that I would add the liquid from my steeping at the end of the boil, so with 10 min left I poured the contents of the jar into a fine mesh hop sack which I held above my kettle. This is the point where I realized too much of my water was still hung up in the grain and I didn't have a bit of rinsing water around. So my utilization of the dark grains was pretty low on this batch and I'll be ready for next time with a thinner dark steeping.

My (not very dark) mash runoff

The wort was split into 3 carboys with 2 of them getting WLP007 (one of these two also got a small amount of oak) and one getting ECY18. I figured this was a great way to take advantage of the accidentally getting sent a vial of this yeast and to see how the ECY18 English Mild yeast compared to other English strains. By now these three carboys are all bottled up and bottle conditioned (1-1.5 weeks in primary was fine with an appropriate pitch of rather flocculant yeast in a low OG beer like this) and while I've had each of the three treatments at this point, I'll wait a bit more until reviewing all three.


The Recipe

Brew Day: 19 October 2014
Batch Size: 13.5 gallons in carboys
OG: 1.034
IBU: ~14, Tinseth formula
FG: 1.011 for the two WLP007 batches and 1.012 for the ECY18 batch
ABV: 3.0%
Color: about 20 SRM (I haven't really looked too closely to get an exact number yet).

Grist:
10.6   lb (4.81 kg) Doehnel #24 (UK style light malt, ~1.9 L) -                     63.9%
1.75   lb (790 g)    Doehnel #26 (North American style light malt, ~1.9 L) - 10.5%
1.5     lb (680 g)    Brown Malt -                                                                      9.0%
1.25   lb (567 g)    Crystal 60 L -                                                                     7.5%
1.0     lb (454 g)    British Crystal 135-160 L -                                                6.0%
0.375 lb (170 g)    Hugh Baird Chocolate -                                                     2.3%
0.125 lb (57 g)      Weyermann Carafa II Special -                                          0.8%

*Note: I talk a bit about Doehnel malts in earlier posts like this one. These malts are grown and produced locally by a small maltster. The color and general style allow closest substitute malts to be chosen.

Hops:
33 g Slovenian Aurora 8.0% aa boiled for 60 minutes

Yeast:
WLP007 Dry English and ECY018 English Mild
1 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrients

Other:
Victoria's water is very low in minerals so salt additions are basically the final concentrations.
9 g CaCl2, 5 g CaSO4 in 30qt sparge
13 g CaCl2, 7 g CaSO4 in 43 qt sparge
1 tab whirlfloc

28 g oak - a single piece which was cut from a section of an oak chain from the now defunct Okanagan Barrel Works. This oak went into the primary of one of the carboys and stayed in until the beer was bottled (11 days). I prepped it by rinsing it a couple of times with boiling water and then soaking it overnight in a mason jar full of boiling water. This definitely strips out some of the oak but I was more worried about over-oaking than under-oaking. Also I didn't want to pick anything up in a beer like this, which due to it's low hopping, low alc, and low percent of attenuation is especially susceptible to contaminant microbes.

Mash and Fermentation:
I mashed at 156 F (68.9 C) for 60 minutes. For the fermentation I pitched at 64-65 F (17.8-18.3 C) and kept it there for the first 48 hours. I raised the temp to 68 F (20 C) over the next day (the ECY18 carboy got warmer because I neglected to check the setting of my aquarium heater) and I held this temp for 2 days before letting the beers return to room temp and bottling (at day 7 for the WLP007 carboy, day 10 for the ECY18 and day 11 for WLP007 + oak). The difference in bottling times was driven by how much time I had to bottle rather than each carboy needing different amounts of time.

2016 Update: I'm long overdue in linking the tasting notes into this recipe post. Here are the tasting notes for this brew.

The WLP007 plus oak took first place in the first round (Seattle) of NHC 2015 and scored in the upper 30s in the final round but didn't place. I stored bottles in the fridge but didn't rebrew it, or rather, changed some parts of the recipe in the rebrew and the rebrew wasn't better than the original. Although there was time I didn't want to try again going back to the initial recipe (I had my fill of dark milds for a bit) so the bottles I sent were well past their prime by the time the final round came.
 

My finished wort was much darker than the mash runnings due to the cold-steeped malt

Sour-worted Soma tasting

I've been experimenting a bit with ways to add mild acidity to certain beer styles before beginning primary fermentation. For this recipe I fermented a portion of a previous beer with a similar grist with Lactobacillus until I was happy with its acidity and then blended that portion back into the boil for this brew day.


Aroma: Peachy and citrus, the tartness is there, tangerine, strong Wyeast 3724 floral aroma. There is more Wyeast 3724 character in the balance than I feel I usually get from the yeast blending. There is a pleasant mild minerally character and a mild funkyness/rustic aroma (enough that one might wonder if there is brett in here).

Appearance: Thick fine very large white head (I gave a bit of an aggressive pour) with excellent head retention. The beer is a finely hazy straw color. It is pretty and hits what I am looking for appearance-wise in a saison.

Taste: There is a nice dry citrus fruityness (tangerine and mild lemon) and floral yeast character. The yeast character is strong and pleasant with some peach in there with the citrus. The hops come through a bit muddled, which is influenced by a rough planty hop character in the finish. I'm not sure if that is due to hop material making it into the fermenter and sitting warm with the beer for an extended period of time or related to the lower boil pH with the hops (or both, and more on this below). But it is definitely something I'll need to work on for future batches. The yeast fruityness becomes more prominent in the balance with warmth and the hop flavor becomes lower in the balance with warmth. The acidity is a bit higher than I'd like it to be for this beer. There is a nice hop bitterness before the roughness comes in.

Mouthfeel: The beer has a pleasantly prickly high fine carbonation. The body is light with a nice smoothness and the lightly tart finish is great. There is a bit of warming in the finish (probably due to both the acidity and the alcohol). That planty character in the finish is noticeable in the mouthfeel as well as the flavor.

Overall Impression: This beer is good but not where I wanted it to be. For a first order try with this method I think I got some good information out of it and I like the way the acidity is working with the yeast character. There is a hint of flavor I've gotten from stressed 3724 before, so the low pH might have stressed out the yeast a bit (or maybe it was something else). Either way it is really low level and I don't mind it. I would probably bring the acidity down a bit on future batches anyway. I don't think the low fermentation pH had many effects on the yeast and I think if I lower the acidity a bit, as I wanted to do independent of it's influence on yeast character, I think the pH wouldn't be a problem for the yeast character. And that seems to be going away with more conditioning time. Overall the beer is also improving with more conditioning time.

The aroma is great and overall the flavor is good. The acidity brightens the beer and lightens the body. The flavor is great when I get past the roughness of the hops in the finish. That is something that I am especially sensitive to in my beers and I think many people would miss it if I didn't mention it. I sent this off to a competition, where it scored better than I expected, and one of the judges said something briefly about some astringency, but didn't talk about rough hop flavor or anything like that.

I think the big thing to work on with this batch for me is the rough hoppyness. I've gotten that recently with another beer without any pre-primary souring and with a comparable hopping regiment, which leads me to believe it is primarily driven by what is happening with the hops and not the pH of the boil. I've had similar hop amounts at similar timings to this batch without any problem, and have also noticed with previous batches that if I get too much hop material carryover into the fermenter than I am prone to getting this flavor, so I think that may e the big issue.

The roughness is in the lingering aftertaste after the finish and if I'm not thinking about it I can not notice it. And then I think the beer is great. After this batch I switched to hop bags to try to limit hop material getting into the fermenter (partially driven by switching boil kettles) and I haven't run across the hop roughness anymore. Some batches have worked great, like the re-brews of my Belgian single and petite saison, but I also have had batches coming out less hoppy than I'd like, leaving something missing. I'm not totally happy with the hop bags and am still looking for a better solution to keep hops out of the fermenter while getting the hop character I want.

So overall the beer is good but not up to my standards. But I don't think much (or possibly any) of that has to do with the method of getting acidity. The 1st attempt at sour-worting was a reasonable success even if the overall beer didn't hit the target.

Yeast Blending continued- A worked example with Petite Saison

To follow up the introduction for how I go about yeast growing and blending, I wanted to give a worked example of how I handled blending in a more advanced scenario. It could certainly get much more complicated than this, but I think this is a good way to show my process and the potential value that yeast blending can add to brewing. As a warning, this is on the more technical/math side of things and this approach may not be what you're interested in. It's pretty dense but if you are really interested in blending yeast, and you want to do it in a controllable way, continue on. I try to break down the steps simply and repetitively so if you get it right away, excellent and sorry for the redundancy. And if you feel like you are missing something let me know. I probably wasn't clear enough and I though about this for a LONG time before actually doing the blending, so it took me a while to understand it. And it took me a while to work out the best way to do it. I think if you want to do yeast blending in a repeatable fashion you are going to want to think about blend ratios and total pitching rates. So here's how I do it in a more tricky situation...

The setup: I have been using a blend of Wyeast 3724 (Belgian Saison) and Wyeast 3711 (French Saison) for almost 2 years now and have been really happy with the results. I get a majority of the flavor profile from the 3724 combined with the reliable and excellent fermentation behavior of the 3711 and a nice complexity from additional flavor. So far this blend had been based on wanting that flavor balance with 3724 dominating, but I hadn't run any trials to find an optimal blend. So batch to batch blend ratios would swing from about 60%/40% Wyeast 3724/3711 to 90%/10% Wyeast 3724/3711 based on what I had available at the time and what splits worked best with the cell count splits I had of the individual yeasts. It was time to run some controlled yeast blend ratio trials to work out what the optimal blend is for what I want my saisons to be.

The yeasts used in this blending

I was also starting to run low on petite saison and I was really happy with how that recipe worked out in my first batch. With summer fading away I thought I would try to get a re-brew in and use that recipe, a beer one can drink larger volumes of and that is on the simple side for recipe, as a base for working on these yeast blends. The goal, as I break down in my Petite Saison Rebrew post, was to target a blend on the upper end and on the lower end of the range that I usually fall into for my yeast blending. In addition I made a blend with a third yeast, Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse, and in a fourth carboy I used the 3724/3711 blend on the upper end of the range I usually fall into with additions of Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus.

The Blending: Before I started any of the blending I got out the yeast I had and thought about the cell counts I had in each container. In the petite re-brew post I refer to 80/20and 60/40 blends, and I have also referred to these in the bottles I gave away. In my brewing notebook I refer to 85/15 and 70/30 blends, which were my actual target going into this. The 80/20 and 60/40 must have come out of what I thought I had done after the fact (as it turns out that was not the case).

Anyway, I made a table with my target blend ratios and the total number of cells I would need in each carboy based on the Mr. Malty calculator. I had jars of ~110 billion and ~150 billion cells of Wyeast 3724 and of ~65 billion cells of Wyeast 3711. Conveniently for the main two carboys the total desired pitch worked out to 100 billion cells each based on my OG and volume. I also knew full and empty weights of my jars (I approximated the empty with another jar of the same style/size). I blended the 150 billion cells of 3724 and the 65 billion cells of 3711, making a blend of roughly 70/30 with ~215 billion total cells.

My Target Blends

Knowing the full weight of this jar and an approximated empty weight, I knew the weight of my blend slurry which was ~215 billion total cells (150 of 3724 and 60 of 3711). For a pitch of ~100 billion cells of my 70/30 blend I needed to add a bit under half of this slurry. After adding the appropriate pitch of this slurry I would have about 115 billion cells left in the 70/30 blend (210 to start - 100 needed, approximately 80 billion cells of 3724 and 35 billion of 3711 left).

To this I added the extra 110 billion cells of 3724 from the other jar, making an approximate total cell count of 225 billion cells composed of ~190 billion of 3724 and ~35 billion of 3711, a blend ratio of roughly 85/15. Knowing the new full mass of this blend and the same approximated empty jar mass I could add a bit less than half of what I had to add ~100 billion cells to the target 85/15 blend, leaving me with ~125 billion cells in 85/15 target blend left over.

Okay, so I've added the yeast to my first two carboys and it all worked out pretty smoothly. Now I have 2 carboys remaining: 85/15 blend plus brett and lact and the carboy with Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse (which I'll call WF from here on out). For the WF blend I have a blend ratio of 62% 3724, 27% Wallonian Farmhouse and 11% 3711 in my notebook. I honestly don't remember my reasoning for such a precise and strange ratio. I had no reason to choose a specific amount of Yeast Bay yeast to add, except that I was happy with the character from using it in my Barrel Aged Saison. So the choice probably came from how many cells I needed and how much 3724 and 3711 I had left over. If I actually worked it out that exactly I must have been pretty sharp at that point in the process.

I had ~125 billion cells left and based on volumes and OG I would need ~85 billion cells total in the +brett and lacto (+BL) treatment and ~55 billion cells total in the WF treatment. I couldn't meet my desired pitch counts with the 3724 and 3711 I had left, but that's good because I would be adding other yeast/bacteria. I would slightly underpitch Saccharomyces to the +BL carboy and make up for this with brett and lacto to come to my target, while potentially overpitching total cells a bit. And I would underpitch 3724/3711 and add Wallonian Farmhouse to hit my target of 55 billion cells in the WF treatment. Back calculating based on those targets I wanted to add approximately 75% (~82 billion cells) of 125 billion remaining 85/15 blend to the +BL treatment, leaving ~43 billion cells of 3724 and 3711 for the WF treatment. Since that is a pretty even split, it must have determined the strangely specific 3724/3711/Wallonian Farmhouse ratio from above for the WF treatment.

I find it easier to think about the blending from this perspective after the fact and I would suggest carrying on like this, but during my actual blending I did the last 3 blends in the the opposite order (adding ~125 billion cells of the target 85/15 blend to a combination of WF and +BL treatments and leaving the rest for the normal 85/15 target blend).

I kept the Wallonian Farmhouse yeast separate, since it was only going into one carboy, to make up the difference in case I messed up on one of my pours. The same can be said for the brett and lacto. I didn't add known numbers of cells of those, but I could add more or less based on how much Saccharomyces I added. So with this target plan all thought through, I went ahead and did the blending. My actual blend ratios are shown in the table below. As it turns out, my Saccharomyces blends were 86/14 (Wyeast 3724/Wyeast 3711), 70/30 (Wyeast 3724/Wyeast 3711), and 69/12/19 (Wyeast 3724/ Wyeast 3711/Wallonian Farmhouse). So a pretty good job hitting my targets overall.

My actual blends. Wallonian abbreviated Wall. Cells added from (slurry mass added) / (total slurry mass). Cells of each type added from (total cells) * (% of each type) /100. Total cells remaining determined from (initial counts) - (added).

I think this was as successful as it turned out to be was due to the meticulous planning of target blend ratios and how I would come up with those based on the yeast I had. Keeping target pitches simple fractions of my total blend volumes (in two of the four cases it was about 1/2 of my blend and in the remaining two it was 75% and 25%) made this simpler to execute. And if my jars of yeast did not break down so easily into these blend ratios I would have either adjusted my target (with this blend ratio trial, targets were pretty flexible as long as I had one as a high % of 3724 and one as a lower %) or I would not have added a full jar. Keeping things as fool-proof as possible when it comes to pouring into a carboy is key here.

Hopefully this approach made sense. Definitely ask if you're stuck on something. And hope it proves helpful to you if you decide to try your own yeast blending. It definitely doesn't have to be as complicated as this so don't feel scared away from doing your own blending if this seemed too much. It's something I had to work up to from doing a bit of more simple blending first but I think it is a valuable approach to optimize your blending and to controllably try out different yeasts.

Petit Saison Rebrew

The grist

I was really happy with my first batch of petite saison, and though I knew by the time the re-brew was ready it wouldn't quite be summer anymore, I figured it would be ok and the beer was definitely worth re-brewing. Since it is a pretty straightforward beer recipe wise, it was also a good candidate for refining my yeast blending. Previously my rough target of ~80% Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison, ~20% Wyeast 3711 French Saison wasn't really based off much in terms of specific test results. I wanted the flavor profile of 3724 to be prominent over the profile of 3711, it was a convenient blend for some earlier batches, and I liked the results of those earlier batches. So it was about time to test that blend ratio out. In order to end up with a good amount of 3 or 4 different blends, I opted for a 16 gallon batch. That also gave me a good opportunity to test out some newer equipment on a pretty low-stress brew before I really needed to count on the equipment and know it's quirks.

A full 20 gallon pot during the boil

The brew day went pretty well. Because my OG was so low I was especially wary of over-sparging. I held some of my sparge water to add straight to the kettle rather than using it as sparge water in the mash tun and I was prepared to top up more as needed. The wort was split into 4 carboys. 3 were kept 'clean' (with only Saccharomyces) and one carboy got Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces in addition to normal yeast. As I mentioned above, one of my big goals with this beer was to try different blend ratios to see what I should set as my target blend for future batches of saison.

For the blending I chose my usual target for the blend of saison yeasts I normally use (~80% 3724, ~20% 3711), a blend more heavy on the 3711 (60% 3724, 40% 3711) and a blend incorporating a third yeast (60% 3724, 20% 3711, 20% Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse). Usually my saisons come out with a blend somewhere between the first two based on convenience, so the goal there was to determine how much that blend ratio really matters. With the third option I wanted to see if I could improve the blend by adding a third yeast. And I was happy with Wallonian Farmhouse and had some around from my barrel aged saison (which just came out of the barrel and is tasting pretty good), so that became the third yeast to put into the blend. Keep in mind that those percentages were targets, and while I was roughly close to that (I recorded what I actually did), the exact numbers are a bit different. It might be worthwhile putting up how I did that blend as a more advanced follow up to my intro to yeast blending. So I'll save a detailed work up of the blend ratio for there.
 

The Saccharomyces strains for this batch

Recipe
Batch Size (vol in primary): 16 Gallons
OG: 1.031
FG: 1.001
ABV:4.0%
IBU: ~21 (Tinseth)

Grist:
36.1% Doehnel Pale Munich (6-7L)
35.8% Doehnel Light Pils (1.5L)
13.5% Wheat Malt
8.5% Weyermann Acidulated Malt
6.0% Caravienne

Adding the caravienne was a change from the first recipe, and we'll see if I like the addition or not. Generally I avoid that sort of malt in pale saisons. However given the especially low gravity of this one I thought maybe it would help boost the malt perception (even though the first batch did come out with a pretty good malt character).

Hops:
84g Hallertau Mittelfrueh pellets, 4.5% aa
77g Tettnang Pellets, 4.3% aa
20g Slovenian Bobek pellets, 5.09% aa

Yeast:
Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison
Wyeast 3711 French Saison
Yeast Bay Wallonian Farmhouse

And in the 4th carboy:
Yeast Bay Lochristi Brett blend
Wyeast 5223 Lactobacillus brevis

Other:
CaSO4 and CaCl2: +95 ppm Ca2+, +113 ppm SO42-, +71 ppm Cl-
Victoria's water has very low levels of dissolved ions so these addition levels are basically the final concentration.
1 Tab Whirlfloc
1 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrients

Mash:

4 carboys fermenting (uncovered for the picture only)

85 minutes qt 150 F (65.6 C), roughly half of the acidulated was added with the rest of the grist and the other 1/2 was added with 15 minutes left in the mash. No mash out above 160 F (71.1 C) to continue conversion into the kettle.

Boil plan:
90 minute boil. I topped up with water as necessary to hit my targets. I didn't want to over-sparge so I expected I would need to top up a fair bit. I used hop bags for this brew as I was using a new larger boil kettle and I didn't have a good way to keep hops out of my fermentation otherwise.

1st wort hops: 12g Tettnang and 19g Hallertau
25 minutes left in boil: 20g Slovenian Bobek
20 minute steep after flame out: 65g Tettnang and 65g Hallertau

Fermentation Plan:
Pitch at 60-70 F (20-21.1 C) and let it rise/warm it up to 78-80 F (25.6-26.7 C) over the first 3 days or so.

3-Aug-14 Brew Day

13-Aug-14 Turned my aquarium heaters off in the fermentation baths and let the beer temp drop to room temp over the next day and a half or so.

7-Sept-14 Bottled. I went away for two and a half weeks at the end of August/beginning of September so I wasn't able to bottle any sooner. But spending that much time in the primary fermenter was not a problem.

Here are the tasting notes from this batch.

The three 'clean' blends (+1 other batch) bottled

Sour-Worted Soma

One of my main homebrewing projects/focuses for the next year is developing ways to get a reliable and repeatable tartness or light acidity into beers which I ferment 'clean' (meaning without Brettanomyces or bacteria, only Saccharomyces). My basic goal for doing this is to ferment a 'clean' beer in a normal ale time frame while still achieving a refreshing tartness. I am definitely not interested in using this method to provide all the acidity in a beer that is fully sour. For these beers I will still use mixed fermentations, where the flavor development during a slow acidic fermentation will result in what I think is a much better beer than relying only on quick pre-primary souring. I talked about more about my motivations for pre-primary souring and methods like sour worting in this post.

I've frequently used pre-primary souring methods in my saisons to add a tart edge to an otherwise normal beer. I find this helps the refreshing aspects of the beer and, in this style, that refreshing character is an important part of what makes the beer. Usually I use acidulated malt out of ease, but I've done some sour mashes with good results. This beer is based off a recipe which I initially sour mashed, but this time I wanted to try sour-worting (which I learned of from the Mad Fermentationist). This technique involves souring wort with Lactobacillus and then re-boiling this soured wort and fermenting it without bacteria. In my case I decided to only sour a portion of the wort which I pulled off a previous batch and I would blend back in during the boil of this beer.

The soured portion after adding it back in the boil

A couple weeks before this brew I brewed a similar saison which ended up going into an oak barrel, and I took the opportunity to produce some extra wort to pull off for souring. I decided I would leave the batch at room temperature as I had time to wait and while lacto may thrive at elevated temperatures, it certainly works fine at ambient temps as well. There was a small snag, that I didn't have any Lactobacillus around. So I used the dregs for The Bruery's Hottenroth, a beer almost completely fermented with Lactobacillus. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to make a starter with that and while it did add a bit of acidity, it took some time to get going. Fortunately I was able to pick up a pack of the Wyeast seasonal Lactobacillus brevis. So after about a week and a half of mild souring I added a the lacto, which dropped the pH down to 3.5 over the next week. At that point I was happy with the acidity of the sour-worted portion and I was ready for the brew day. I've made sure to leave some of the wyeast lacto around so that I'm prepared for future sour worting trials and I don't have to go through quite as much extended pre-souring.

Recipe
Target OG: 1.052
Volume: 7.5 gallons
IBU: ~25-30, though I didn't end up calculating it for this batch
FG: ~1.002-1.001
ABV: 6.7%

Grist:
86.4% Doehnel malt #25 (1.5 L light pilsner), more about Doehnel malts here
9.1% Doehnel malt #27 (6-7 L Light Munich)
4.5% Acidulated malt (Weyermann)

Hops:
85g Czech Saaz pellets, 3.6%aa
29g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh pellets, 4.8% aa
57g Tettnang pellets, 4.3% aa

Yeast:
1/2 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrients
My standard Wyeast 3724 and 3711 blend (more about blending here)
Dregs from The Burery's Hottenroth
Wyeast 5223 Lactobacillus brevis
Yeast Bay Lochristi Brett blend

Salts and other:
8 g CaSO4, 6 g CaCl2 in 6.5 gallons of mash water (+120 ppm Ca2+, +181 ppm SO42-, +79 ppm Cl-)
5 g CaSO4, 2 g CaCL2 in 4 gallons of sparge water (+101 ppm Ca2+, +184 ppm SO42-, +43 ppm Cl-)
Note: Victoria's base water is very low in minerals, so the final mineral concentrations are basically the same as the added concentrations.
1 tab whirlfloc

The Mash

Mash Plan:
146F (63.3 C) for 50 minutes, 5-10 minutes of recirculating with heat to raise the temp to 154 (67.8 C) for 20 minutes. 1/2 of the acidulated malt will be mashed with the rest of the grist and 1/2 will be added to the mash with 10-15 minutes left. I overshot the 154 by a bit and ended up spending the last 20 minutes between 156 and 158 F (68.9-70 C). This shouldn't really be a problem as the bulk of my conversion happened during that first 50 minutes and the second step is to finish everything up quickly (and it would probably happen more quickly at 156-158F/68.9-70 C). So it should not have a huge influence but it was definitely not my goal.

Collecting runnings

Boil Plan:
90 minute boil. After 30 minutes of boil the sour portion (now at pH = 3.5) will poured into the wort. A small portion of the soured portion will be left behind and final wort will be added back to the sour carboy to allow the beer to continue to sour with lacto in the primary. 3 hop additions: 42 g Tettnang and 56 g Saaz with 20 minutes left in the boil, 15 g Tettnang and 15 g Saaz with 5 minutes left in the boil and 14 g Saaz and 28 g Hallertau at flame out for a 15 minute hop stand.

About to finish the boil

After blending in the pH = 3.5 soured portion to my pH = 5.1 wort, the pH dropped to 4.2. It smelled nicely lactic and tasted good at this point. You do have to be careful with too low of a pH inhibiting Saccharomyces (I don't know what a typical threshold value would be), but I didn't notice any problems like that with this batch.

Fermentation:
I used a blend of 3724 and 3711 (~80% 3724 and ~20% 3711, ~255 billion cells total) into the two carboys - one clean and the live lacto carboy with wort added back in (more on how I blend yeasts here). I pitched the blend at 68 F (20 C) and steadily to 78 F (25.6 C) over the first 2 days. I held the temperature steady at 78 (25.6 C) for the next 4 days and then at day 6 I raised the temp to 80 (26.7 C) until the beer reached it's terminal gravity, at which point I turned off the aquarium heater I was using to keep it warm and let the temperature fall down to the upper 60's (~20 C), which is my room temperature.

The bottled beer

I bottled the beer on August 12th. I am reasonably happy with it and find that it is improving with a bit more time in the bottle. I'll give it full tasting notes in the next week or two.

Yeast growing and blending

Many homebrewers out there have a good idea how to grow yeast into pitchable quantities from smack packs or tubes and then pitch this into wort, so this will mostly be focused on how I grow up vials/tubes of yeast into multiple vial/tube equivalents of known cell counts as well as how I do my yeast blending and why I do it that way.

Generally when I am blending yeasts where the blend ratio is important to me I am brewing saisons. But there could be other reasons out there that folks might want to blend yeasts and this works just as well. I don't apply this approach to adding Brettanomyces to beers. When I am brewing mixed fermentations with brett I usually just add a (relatively) small amount of cells (either after primary or when I add my primary yeast) and don't worry much about pitching rates. Okay, so on to the first step, growing the yeast.

Sanitizing jars

I get packs/vials of the individual yeast and grow them up on a stirplate, usually in about 2 L increments because that is convenient sizing for me. I do this whether or not I will end up blending yeast. According to the Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator, 1 fresh vial/pack (~100 billion cells) into a 2L starter on a stirplate yields about 300 billion cells. When the starter is done I cold crash it, decant the starter wort (it is important here to use a magnet to hold the stirbar out of the way so it doesn't disrupt your settled yeast cake), pour in boiled cooled water to stir up the yeast cake until I get a roughly homogenous slurry and then split the yeast equally into 3 mason jars. I now have 3 equivalent vials/packs from the one I started with (which I why I chose the 2 L size to begin with).

Filled with boiling water to cool

With these jars I will now repeat the process to get either the quantity of yeast I'll want to pitch for a future batch or to split again into 3 jars of approximately 100 billion cells each. Sometimes I'll split into more or fewer jars and/or grow at different numbers of cells, but these are probably the most frequent ways I do it. When I have this process on the go for multiple different yeasts at once, as I usually do, it is important to keep good notes of what is going on. I keep a piece of paper as a log for all the yeasts on the go of when I made starters and how many cells I expected them to produce. And each jar gets a label of what is in it, when it was added to the jar, how many cells I think are there, and what generation of cells it is (I treat the vial/pack as generation 0, the cells I've grown from the first starter I call generation one, and cells I grow from a generation one jar I call generation 2, and so on).

Magnet the stir bar out of the way so it doesn't disrupt the yeast cake

Growing up yeast in this way has two main advantages that I see:

1) I keep a relatively good constraint on my cell counts. I am not actually counting cells with a microscope and a hemocytometer, but I trust the work behind the Mr. Malty calculator and they numbers it gives. And even if my numbers are wrong, they will be wrong consistently so this won't really be a problem. By pitching rate trials where I vary the cells/ml/degree Plato added to a given beer, I will be able to determine if, with my process, under or overpitching to a standardized value is best. And I can adjust what I am doing until I am happy with the results, regardless if that makes me 'overpitching' or 'underpitching' relative to a calculation. Bottom line: process is controllable and consistent!

Three roughly even splits of the yeast

2) I feel that the dirtiest parts of my process are chilling, where the lid of my pot is cracked open to fit my immersion chiller and therefore the cooling wort is susceptible to airborne bacteria and yeasts, and at bottling. Not specifically the act of bottling making the beer in the bottles unclean, but bottling making the neck of the carboy (which I will have to pour a yeast cake over) unclean. Growing all my yeast on stirplates does take a bit of time but it avoids the possibility of introducing and concentrating bacteria and wild yeast picked up through the entire brewing process.


So overall, I feel I am able to more cleanly grow yeast on a stirplate and it gives me good and repeatable control on cell counts, which is not something you get from a yeast cake. And having some constraint on cell counts will be necessary if you want to blend in any sort of regular and controlled way. So now that I have jars with controlled amounts of different yeasts, how do I go about blending them?

~100 billion cells each of  2nd generation WLP 007 added to jars on Sept. 18th

First you'll need to have wort around that you want to blend yeasts into, and of course those yeasts. If you have a known volume and strength of wort (going with your target numbers will work fine here for setting the blend up, but being prepared to make minor adjustments if you don't hit your targets is probably a good plan) then you can figure out how many cells you are ought to add with the Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator. Now you need to come up with a blend ratio of your yeasts. Choose a ratio based on yeasts characteristics like flavor profiles and what you are looking for in your finished beer as well as other yeast characteristics like attenuation. If you don't have one in mind or your ratio is flexible, you can choose one based on what is a convenient split for the yeast counts you have around.

Let's say you have one yeast around at 100 billion cells/jar and another at 50 billion cells/jar and you wanted to target something like 70% yeast 1 and 30% yeast 2. And let's say the Mr. malty calculator says you need 250 billion cells for your wort. Well 2 jars of 1 and 1 jar of 2 gets you right at your target total cells and is a blend of 80% 1 and 20% 2. If that is an ok blend ratio compromise for you, mix the three jars together into one of the jars (it might be helpful to pour off some liquid from the jars first so they fit fine), stir up the mixture and add it to the carboy (or you could just add the 3 jars individually).

If you run into a more complicated situation where you need to split up jars, split one blend into multiple carboys, or try the same 2 yeasts in different blend ratios in 2 different carboys, it might get a bit trickier. But definitely still manageable. It is challenging to blend cleanly by volume, but quite easy to do so by weight. The only issue is that if you over-pour, you generally can't take it back.

To work this out you will want to either know the masses of your jars when they were empty or have an empty jar of the same type around for an approximate empty mass. Let's look back at the situation above to work this out: wort that needs 250 billion cells and you want to add 70% yeast 1 and 30% yeast 2. Well, 0.7*250 = 175 billion cells of yeast 1 needed. So 1 full jar and 3/4 of a second at 100 billion cells/jar. Now if you weight the full jar and either weigh a similar empty jar or know the tare weight, you will know the mass of liquid and yeast in the jar. If you mix this up so it is roughly homogenous, you will be able to calculate the mass of 3/4 of that liquid. So now you can pour out until you have poured 3/4 of the weight into the first jar (pouring a bit less than you think, checking, and adding more if necessary is a good safeguard here). It helps to have a second pair of hands for writing down numbers and helping to remove lids, but it can definitely be done alone. Now you will need to follow the same process with yeast 2 to achieve 75 billion cells. In our example at 50 billion cells/jar that is 1.5 jars. So one full jar added to the other mixture and half of a second, with the second jar split in half as described above.

The more you go through this pouring the better you'll get at it. And don't worry too much if you mess up and pour too much. As long as you've recorded the masses you poured, you can calculate what you did and you can re-create it in the future or compare it to another blend next time. It obviously gets more complex as you introduce a 3rd yeast, different blend ratios of the 2 yeasts into multiple carboys, or the same blend but into 2 carboys of unequal size (in this last case just calculate how much you need in each carboy as well as how much you need total, then make the blend for the total amount in one jar and pour by mass into the 2 carboys). If this is something you'd like to try, and it can work pretty smoothly once you've gotten used to it, I'd suggest starting with some simpler blends to get a hang of the process. And if all that seemed like too much work or it's not for you, the first parts of growing up yeast cultures are a great way to stretch one pack/vial into multiple batches while being able to have good control over pitching rates.

If you're looking for more info on blending yeasts, Kara Taylor from White Labs gave a talk at NHC in 2014 about the topic (old NHC seminars are freely available to American Hombrewers Association members). And Zymurgy had an article in the May/June 2013 issue.

Also, here is a worked example of what I did for a more complicated yeast blend involving three yeasts and three different clean (no brett or bacteria) treatments in carboys.