The unpleasant combination of cold and wet weather this winter and the lack of motivation, endemic because of the pandemic, has kept me out of my brew shed since mid December. Now that the sun is showing its face more often and the Spring bulbs have lifted my spirits I decided it was time for a big clean down and to start a couple of brewing projects.
Orkney Gold Clone
A friend introduced me to the beer of the Swanney Brewery on Orkney. His fiancee is from this island group and he brought me a couple of bottles after a visit in 2019. Early in 2020 I came across a special batch they had made for one of our local beer festivals. I was out with our brewing team seeking inspiration for a flavoursome beer, but without strong citrus notes, as the basis for a VE Day beer. Well COVID-19 put pay to scaling-up that recipe, so I decided to start my 2021 brewing year with this. I reckoned that I make too many pale beers, so I altered the malt bill to aim at amber. Tasting the green beer I’m not confident that 3% Black malt was the best way to achieving this, perhaps I would have been better to use a larger percentage of chocolate malt for the colour? However, the conditioning (secondary fermentation) stage is great for smoothing out flavours, with strong flavours knocked back, and subtle flavours allowed to shine through, so the true test can only be made in 4-10 days time. I can always try this hop bill with a different malt bill if it isn’t quite what I had in mind, or just aim for gold as per the original.
Subtle Saison
I’ve come to learn that it’s best to run two brewing projects at the same time, interleaved so I can be working on one, whilst the other has time to condition and also to give me space to think about the outcome of the initial project and not rush into changes. My second project is what I’ve titled ‘A Subtle Saison.’ I really like the flavours which come from Saison yeast as well as the mouthfeel. I had some early successes with strong flavour partners – raspberries in one example and Sorachi Ace hops for the other. The raspberry version was very crushable, but the Sorachi Ace Saison, whilst top notch, was something I loved to drink by the half pint of with meal, but no more – it was not a session ale.
Something inspired me to think that if the spicy notes from the Saison yeast could be partnered with the herbal / floral flavours of a noble hop. I feel that at the right relative levels that this could be a very refreshing session beer sitting on the subtle / interesting boundary. Like lager but with a bit more going on. I’m part of a local home brew club and one of the guys has a lot of yeast knowledge and let me try two of his Saisons from two different yeast strains. I thought the Wyeast 3711 derived brew was very close to what I was looking for. [As an aside, if you want an interesting beer, head to his exciting new shop / bar – Corto – here in Clitheroe.] Before trying this yeast, I knew that I had a few packs of Fermentis BE-134 in the fridge which either needed to be used or sold on. When used at the top of its temperature range, the esters profile from BE-134 was clearly too bold for what I had in mind. But before ordering any 3711 I thought it would be really interesting to see if the BE-134 could give subtle flavours if held at 18 C rather that being allowed to rise to 24 C. One big benefit of my fermenter is that it does allow for careful temperature control and I don’t risk it stalling because it becomes too cold or taking off either. It is ironic that the pilot brew kit that I have at home is rather better than that which we have at work. I guess mine was bought to a design specification rather than to a budget. If you are reading this before the 30th March, you could follow this Saison fermentation in real time thanks to my Tilt.
I’ll report back on the results in a couple of weeks, subscribe if you’d like to be notified of the update…