Friday, October 13, 2023

2023 Falling Leaves Saison (Batch 344)

Here it is Autumn. Time to brew my Autumn Seasonal Saison.

I knew I was going to brew sometime in the next week or two, so I had actually biked to my favorite LHBS on Sunday.


More than anything I was interested in seeing how the ride would be.

It turned out to be an awesome 40 mile round-trip ride, so I will probably do this commute more in the future.

The LHBS was out of the dark Munich malt I like to use in this recipe, so I modified it "on the fly". This resulted in a slightly darker beer, but I don't think it will taste too significantly different.

I brewed ...


I was sort of surprised that Indigenous Peoples Day was a work holiday for me, and I wasn't really planning on brewing ... but based on how certain things worked out on Monday I did decide to go ahead and do it.

I probably should have done a little more planning. I had harvested yeast from last Seasonal Saison (2023 Hail Storm Summer Saison (batch 338).


But I must have collected from the starter of that batch rather than once the batch was done. I didn't have a whole lot of yeast collected.

Had I planned better, I would have had a starter going before brew day and so the starter would have been roaring and ready to go.



However, since I didn't decide to brew until that day, I ended up doing more of a vitality starter from the mash wort.

Anyway ... the fermention didn't start off as quickly as it would have, but it appears to have turned out ok. Just a little more lag time before fermentation took off.


Anyway ... I did a long mash with circulation going several hours while I did some other things.

I was draining the mash during lunch.


The Beer Model actually distracted me towards the end of the boil, and I ended up cutting the boil short / doing a bit of a hop stand as opposed to the plan. 

I don't think the timing was such that it really would affect the flavor at all.



The beer was in the fermenter around 3pm, which is much later in the day than my usual time.

As I mentioned above, there was more of a lag for than usual for fermentation to begin, but it was going well by the following afternoon.



As you read this, the main fermentation is done. I'll probably keg next weekend.

I'm looking forward to having this on tap. It will be interesting to see if I notice that any of the changes making a difference.


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Go Blackhawks!

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