speak, it ain't illegal yet

Tonight marked my 2nd adventure into homebrewing. I went ahead and used my experience from my 1st brew in order to make this one a lot smoother. For one, I bought a strainer for my funnel, so I could keep out any extraneous particles from the wort when I transferred it to the primary fermenter. I did run into a little problem when using it. The Saison called for so much hops that the strainer kept getting full. I ended up having to clean it out about 7 times while transferring the wort to the primary fermenter. Thankfully I had Brewmaster Tristan to help, otherwise it could have gotten real ugly. I also figured out what this thing was that came with my brew kit. It is called a “Thief”. It is basically a giant pipette that allows you to easily get a sample out of the carboy into the test jar to use for a hydrometer reading. It was definitely much easier than using the siphon to do it.

For this brew I decided to do one of my favorite types of beer that I like from Goose Island, Saison. It is considered a “pre-modern” Belgian style of beer, as it shares many characteristics of the Belgian ales, including the Belgian style of yeast that gives you that slightly fruity, yet spicy mixture of flavor that only Belgian beers have. The wort boil included 3 additions of hops. There was of course the hops added at the beginning to give the bitterness to the beer, then at 10 minutes before the end of boil some more hops were added to add a nice flavor to the brew. Finally, right at the end of the wart, the final hops are added to give the beer a nice aroma. That is the funny thing about hops. Depending on when you add them to the boil will determine what affect they have on the beer, as hops go through all kinds of changes depending how long they are boiled. The full ingredient list is below:

Specialty Grains
* 0.5 lbs. Dingemans Caravienne

Fermentables
* 6.3 lbs. Golden Light Malt Syrup
* 1 lbs. Light Dry Malt Extract

Boil Additions
* 2 oz. Kent Goldings (60 min)
* 1 oz. Kent Goldings (10 min)
* 1 oz. Kent Goldings (0 min)

Yeast
* Wyeast #3522 Belgian Ardennes Yeast.

The kit called for an optional yeast starter. However, I didn’t think it was really necessary this time around, as the OG for Saison isn’t that high. I do plan on using a yeast starter for the Strong Belgian Ale which will be my next brew. The OG actually came out to be 1050. The kit calls for it being 1056, so it is a little low, but nothing to get hung up about. Once it is done in the fermenter, I will rack it to secondary for almost 2 months to really let the taste develop.

The Spiced Winter Ale has been sitting in the secondary now for a week. I will give it another 1-2 weeks before bottling. A small sampling I took during the racking to the secondary was very good though, so I am really looking forward to opening my own first bottle of homebrew!