2025 Melting Stream Spring Saison (Batch 374)

Here it is mid-April already. Seems we just started Lent ... and now it is almost Easter.

The year is speeding by faster and faster.

Spring has sprung, which in Colorado means we get a few days of hot sunny weather followed by snow.

Lots of melting water. Mountain streams start to rush ...

I have not made a secret of the fact that I'm skipping (most of) the Seasonal beers this year so that I could concentrate on the Roll-a-Style List in order to make progress on my BJCP Goal.

However there was at least one Seasonal I actually wanted to make sure I brewed. The "April" Seasonal.

Melting Stream Spring Saison 

The reason I wanted to get the Melting Stream brewed this year is that this beer has been brewed one less time than the rest of the Seasonal Saisons.

I started the Seasonal Saisons back in 2014 with the Winter Saison at the beginning of the year.

But, by the time I came up with the idea to do a Saison for every season, it was summer, so I skipped Spring that year.

The next year I picked it up in the rotation, and I've brewed a Seasonal Saison every season since then until this year.

So ... This past weekend, I brewed the Melting Stream Spring Saison for 11th time, catching it up with the others.

I didn't really get started all that early, not really getting up until 5:30 and actually got the mash started around 6am.

This gave me a little over an hour and a half before having to head off for church.

I had not made a starter, so I grabbed some of the recirculating wort and did a vitality starter.

I drained the wort and then set the Foundry to heat up to just below boiling at 195 degrees so it could heat up while I was away, allowing me to get up to boiling quickly after I got back.

My pre-boil gravity was a little low, so I ended up adding 4 ounces of table sugar right before the boil.

For some reason, it took longer than expected to get from 195 to 200 than usual. Sometimes this happens and I'm not sure why.

But it got there after too much time and I continued the brew day.

The boil went as planned. I remembered to add all the hop additions and other stuff at the right times.

Cooling went pretty quickly as I'm not as picky about getting saisons down as cold as most of my beers.

I had the yeast pitched and the fermenter in the basement just before 11:30 am.

The yeast was visually active before bedtime.

And it is basically done with the active fermentation. I'll probably let it clean up for another week and be drinking before May.

After the brew day, I went out for a bike ride.

What a great Sunday.

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