Avec les Bons Voeux

Beer Recipes
1

I have a yeast cake of Dupont yeast just about ready for re-use, so I am thinking of brewing a beer similar to Avec.  Not a lot of information out there.  The knowns are:

  • 9.5% abv
  • color a little darker than Saison Dupont, suggesting either a more complex grain bill than pilsner malt or a long boil
  • dry hopped
  • crisp so it must have some sugar

Presently I am thinking:

14 lbs. pilsner malt
12 oz. biscuit malt
8 oz. aromatic
1.5 lbs. sugar

Admiral and Sorachi Ace hops for bittering (just because I have them in stock)
Saaz flavor (maybe a 15 and 5 minute addition)
EKGs knockout
Styrian Goldings dry hop

WY3724 to starter, WY3711 to finish

Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments?

2

Check with Drew.  I think he’s pretty likely to know.

3

Thanks Denny.  Given the secretiveness of Dupont, I would not be surprised that what I know is what I will know.

The nice thing is, I drank my last bottle of Avec last Christmas, and it is unavailable here, so whatever I brew I can’t compare to the original, so it is bound to be better.  8)

And that was a lot of commas.

4

Looks like a good recipe to me! I’ve use Sorachi late and dry for saison - love the lemony character.

5

Thanks for the feedback, HB.  I do think I will do a mixed Styrian Goldings/Sorachi Ace dry hop addition.

6

There was a strong Saison in “Farmhouse Ales” that I have never gotten around to. You might consult that one.

7

I don’t think Dupont uses sugar in any of their beers.

8

I have invoked the name of Drew…we’ll see of he weighs in.

9

Nathan Smith put out a recipe (I can’t remember if it was Zymurgy or BYO, but I think Zymurgy) a few years back for this exact beer.  Maybe in a “Saison for all Seasons”?

10

Saison for All Seasons was Drew’s article.  Checking it now…

Don’t see the exact recipe, but the article does discuss it.  Check the free Zymurgy downloads on teh main AHA website

11

Finally got around to brewing today.  I decided to brew 10 gallons.  I ended up with this recipe:

28 lbs. Avangard pils
2 lbs. Weyermann wheat malt (for nice foamy head)
1 lb. Weyermann melanoidin malt
0.5 lbs. Dingeman biscuit malt

Mash at 150°F for 90 min

Boil for 2.5 hours to concentrate the wort

1 oz. Admiral hops 120 min
0.5 oz. Sorachi Ace 120 min
1 oz. Admiral hops 45 min
0.5 oz. Sorachi Ace 45 min
2 oz. Saaz 15 min
1.5 oz Styrian Goldings 5 min
1.5 oz. Strisselspalt knockout

Chilled to 62°F

Now, the sad part. As stated at the beginning I was going to use a yeast cake from a WY3724 saison. I racked the beer out of the bucket into a keg. While doing so, I notice a little brown dot floating around. At first I think it is a bit of dried krausen gunk floating around, or perhaps some yeast colony, and didn’t think anything of it.

When I am nearly at the end of transfer, I see another one. And then another. I put my head into the bucket and peer at them closely.

Fruit flies! I don’t know if they got in from air lock suck back, or if they crawled under the aluminum foil I placed over the airlock hole initially in order to avoid a stuck ferment.

Oh well. I tasted the hydrometer sample and it tasted fine…just like flat Dupont. But…not wishing to use a yeast cake with dead fruit flies in it, I dumped it.

Fortunately I have a growler with WY3711 slurry preserved and all ready to go as a back up plan.  So I pitched that.