I had a bunch of citrus (blood oranges, navel oranges, and Meyer lemons) and wanted to brew a beer for my work happy hour my wife and I will be hosting in early May. I knew that saison is a style that will be nice and drinkable and refreshing for an afternoon happy hour party. I also thought that the citrus would play well with saison characteristics. My coworker Alex came over to help me brew up this beer. His good friend and housemate just started brewing and he wanted to see what all grain was about. Alex chopped the citrus up into 1/8's and we placed them in a mesh bag and added the last 10 minutes of the boil. I used White Labs American Farmhouse blend yeast which has some funk in it. To compliment the citrus and the yeast Alex and I decided to use Motueka hops which are said to give citrus, passionfruit and tropical fruit aromas and flavors. We also added a small amount of Amarillo for that orange component. In addition I threw in a small amount of cracked black peppercorns, and 6 crushed fresh bay leaves at flameout. The bay leaves had this great fruity aroma with a slight menthol-like component. The beer is fermenting away and smells amazing!
Recipe: 2-Row, White Wheat, Vienna. Motueka and Amarillo hops at 60, 20, and Motueka alone at flameout. Blood oranges, navel oranges, and Meyer lemons, black peppercorns, and fresh bay leaves. WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend.
Posts
Bay leaves huh, you will have to let me know how it turns out. (Maybe that is one of the secret ingredients that Dany uses at Fantome)
ReplyDeleteThe fresh leaves smell so much more fruity than the dry leaves, and they just seemed to match the citrus and saison characters I was going for. We'll see how it goes.
ReplyDelete