Interesting thread
I was in dubio about Citra saisons; I tend to equate Citra with fresh hoppiness, and saisons are (almost by definition) not fresh.
But then I got handed a box of fresh medlars by a friend, with the express directive to brew a saison with them. I could’ve picked Saaz, but gravitated to Citra from the get-go, so here goes: Saison Cul de Chien.
Made a 5 gal. batch, comprising 36% Pilsner, 36% pale and 28% wheat malt.
Mashed on the low end at 150°F, where it gradually petered down to about 140 (my mash tun needs an insulation coat).
70’ boil.
0.5 ounces of Citra @70’ (26 IBU)
1.0 ounces of Citra @ 10’ (6 IBU)
1.5 ounces of Citra @ flameout (0 IBU)
5g of black pepper corns and zest of 1 lemon @10’.
Cooled to 68°F and pitch with French Saison (second generation 3711, kindly donated by homoeccentricus).
Fermented at 71°F, ramping to 77 over the course of a week; dropped from 1.063 to 1.002.
Racked to secondary and split in three batches.
basic version. Will likely be dryhopped with more Citra.
Cul de Chien: added syrup I made from about 2 dozen bletted medlars, half a lemon, and sugar.
basic + Orval dregs for Brett funk and rustic saison character.
I intend to leave all three in secondary untill late spring, and bottle them at 2.5 - 3 volumes of CO2.
I must say I’m quite please with that French Saison. I liked it a lot better than the Fermentis Belle Saison i’ve used for saisons so far. I split my yeast cake in half. One half will be returned to the donating brewer, the other half will make me more saison
The bottle I used is over a year old. There’s definitely Brett still being used at bottling: the beer has that classic brett character all over it. Completely different from the fresh beer. My expectation is that the Brett will impart noticable rustic flavours to my own saison in about half a year. I’ll bottle it then, which should make the citra still noticable by the time it’s drinkable in the historic sense (mid-to-late summer) and possibly improving with maturation for another three years or so.
I bought the book as well. I think table of contents lists it as on page 25, but I believe it’s on 26. Don’t have it in front of me at the moment. Another note for errata Drew or am I remembering incorrectly?
edit: it is listed as 125 but is on 126, very minor detail, just a little fyi
Just tasted homoeccentricus’ Citra Saison.
Fresh and young, which means yay Citra, but also hmmm saison?
I liked it a lot, with a few minor buts. Citra was dosed just right, and paired quite well with the wheat. That being said: wheat has a tartness which I often find distracting. In this case, it left me wanting for something more than only Citra to pair it with.
Interesting beer in that it was obviously very dry, but not empty (except for my remark about the Citra-wheat combo). Yeast presence was maybe not as pronounced as I’d expected, but I gather he fermented slightly cooler than I did, making for a cleaner, wheatier beer.
This is an excellent quencher at this stage: fresh and refreshing, light without using the dreaded “crisp” word. Perhaps not as saison-y in yeast profile, but after a hot day of harvesting, I’d gladly dig up a jug of this and wash away the chaff.
