Melting Stream and Spare Ribs

In February of 2014, I brewed Arctic Vortex Winter Saison for the first time.

Since that day, I've been brewing at least one saison for every season.

I call these series of beers, my Seasonal Saisons.

Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. 

They all use French Saison yeast except the rare occurrence that my LHBS is out of stock and I have to substitute some other yeast. 

They are all dry with simple malt bills. They are all fairly hoppy and use mostly noble hops.

None of them use spices or other flavor additives other than malt / water / hops / yeast.

They range in color from very light (summer) to very dark (winter).

Obviously, I find these beers delicious (otherwise I would stop brewing them).

As this past weekend was the beginning of Spring 2021, it was time to brew my Spring Saison ....

Melting Stream Spring Saison

I decided to do another overnight mash for this batch of beer, mashing in around 1AM. I set the Foundry to a 148 degree temperature at 69% power for rest.

I woke up around 6AM, and immediately pulled out the grain pipe to drain the wort, and turned up the temperature to 200.  

I forgot to turn up the power, so I wasted a little time heating to boil. 

The pre-boil gravity was a little high, so I got better mash efficiency than the recipe planned for. I diluted with about .75 gallons of water to get the gravity down.

It was after 7am before the boil timer started. 

The boil went fine. My OG was right on the planned 1.048. I had the yeast pitched, the fermentor filled and in the basement before 9AM.

I was pretty much cleaned up by 9:30.

There were signs of fermentation by early afternoon.

Later in the day, I made pork spare ribs on my Weber Kettle.

These ribs were pretty big and took up a lot of space on the kettle. But, the cook went well.

I used hickory and cherry wood to provide the smoke. For the first hour or so, I was below 250F.

After about 3.5 hours, I wrapped the ribs, and started my homemade barbeque sauce. 

After a couple hours wrapped, I took them out and applied the sauce for 45 minutes or so.

As always, they turned out delicious.

My NCAA bracket got completely busted when Illinois lost. That sucked.

The Melting Stream Spring Saison has been fermenting for a couple of days. It will turn out awesome and I'm really looking forward to drinking it in a couple of weeks.


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