Krausen Rising

So sad, my last brew day was September 25th of last year. I made a saison. I wrote about it. At the time, I’d just bottled, and I was worried that it wouldn’t carbonate. That turned out not to be a problem. The problem, and this one is particularly tragic, is that the recipe called for spices, and I really should have used them. I’ve popped a few since I bottled them, and there’s a slightly too honeylike maltiness that I don’t like. I was hoping it was a problem with attenuation, and that once the bottles were fully carbonated, the flavor would go away, but I’m not so sure now.

I’d never noticed that honey malt flavor in saisons before, but one of the double-edged benefits about homebrewing for me is the tasting experience I gain from my mistakes. Since I’m an autodidactic brewer, I make weird recipe altering choices, or I brew under less than optimal circumstances - uncontrolled fermentation temperature, poor sparge efficiency due to equipment and user malfunction, untested hop strain additions because I buy what’s available - and due to these variables, I often end up with unbalanced beer. I’ve made IPAs so grapefruity they seemed like beer cocktails*, learned first-hand about oxidation after allowing my fermentation temperature to hit 92+ degrees F, uh… I forget what else. I don’t really want to dwell. But after each of these experiments, failed or otherwise (my first partial mash, a poorly sparged, super low gravity wit, was awesome), I suddenly find myself able to pick out small amounts of flavors I previously hadn’t noticed. I’m pretty good at tasting oxidation in beers, for instance, and after my grapefruit IPA, I can’t handle certain hoppy beers with that fruit’s trademark sharp citrus flavor that I used to dig (Green Flash’s Le Freak is one example). So now that I underspice my saison, I’ve found a malt flavor I don’t particularly like when it is too prominent - this honey thing. It would work under different circumstances, I’m sure, but it’s not working in my saison.

But what makes this saison, and my knee-jerk spice stinginess in the brewing of it, so tragic is this: tonight, before pouring myself a small glass from the ole tap-a-draft in the fridge, I first ground a tiny bit of black pepper and one single coriander seed and sprinkled them in a freshly rinsed glass, swirled it around a bit, then removed the obvious chunks. I sniffed the glass to be sure I could smell a bit of spice, then poured about six ounces of the saison in there. It was great. I loved it. The black pepper and coriander balanced out the overly malty flavors and brought out the character of the yeast perfectly. Motherfucker. This is, however, great incentive to brew another batch, and soon.

* I’ve heard that complaint about West Coast IPAs before - “Eww! It tastes like I’m drinking grapefruit juice!” Yeah, well, you should try my IPA (brew #07 - I still have a few bottles left) before you shoot your mouth off about unbalanced commercial IPAs. My fuckup makes those beers seem balanced.