SaiSon of a bitch (SOB) 2.0

It’s been a HOT and busy summer in Minnesota. Par for the course, I guess. I’ve either playing shows with the band or hanging with my wife and daughter. I haven’t brewed since I did a double brew day back on 5/12 (wheat and oktoberfest). It was about time to find a day again to get something new going. I decided to do a saison on 7/22. This is the second saison I’ve ever made and will be named after the first, SaiSon of a bitch. I love this style. My favorite summer beer by far. The hot weather is well attuned to fermenting this style of beer as well, which definitely went into consideration when selecting this style.

The brew day went reasonably well. The biggest mistake I made was leaving the kitchen while I was filling a bucket with sanitizer and water. I have these clamps that hook onto the sprayer and let me multi-task. I went outside to do who knows what and forgot I was filling the bucket. When I came back in there was a quarter inch of water all over my kitchen floor. I ran for the sink and slipped on the water, banging my knee hard against the cabinet. This all happened with about 20 min. left in the 90 min. boil. It took me an extra 15 min. to clean up my kitchen as fast as I could, turning a 90 min. boil into a 105, which is what you’ll see noted in the boil schedule below. What were supposed to be 60 min. additions turned into 75.

Besides all of that, the brew day went well. The day I brewed was a bit cooler (low 80’s) than the 90-100+ temps we’ve been getting this summer in Minneapolis. The water coming out of my tap was around 80* so after using the wort chiller to get the batch down to that temperature, I filled a carboy and stuck it in my chest fridge for a few hours prior to pitching the yeast. I lost patience when it got down to 72. Over the next two days, the batch moved up to 74 degrees fermenting on my basement floor. Once the temp started to go down, I moved the batch up to the kitchen where it rose to 78 by day four when the krausen started to drop. By day six, the krausen was completely gone and the batch was back down to 76, where it currently sits as I write this on day 7. The airlock has slowed so I’ll be racking this to secondary in the next few days. My goal is to have it reasonably clarified and carbed by National Night Out, 9 days from today. It’s an aggressive schedule but I think I can do it.

Recipe details (basically a Jamil recipe with a few minor tweaks – I’ve been doing a lot of Jamil recipes since buying Brewing Classic Styles this past spring):

Homegrown hops from the 2011 crop going into the boil