Brewing a Hoppy Saison (based on my Prairie 'Merica clone)

After brewing my Maine Beer Co. Peeper clone in late June, my stretch of frantic brewing (for me... 6 batches in 6 weeks!) was over. Enter the summer months... temperatures are a lot higher, making it more difficult to control fermentation adequately (my fermentation chamber became my keezer over a year ago), and I'm often away on weekends off. During the months of July and August, I only brewed one time... and I wanted to make it count; I really had to think hard about what exactly to brew.

It actually turned out to be an easy decision; weeks before, I had ordered one of my favorite Saison yeast strains from my LHBS; because they don't regularly keep it in stock, it can easily take 4 weeks or longer, so I ordered back in early June. Wyeast 3711 French Saison has always given me good results - I like the combination of fruity and pepper flavors that it gives, and I like that it isn't finicky... it's never once crapped out on me and left me wondering if the beer was ever going to finish. With this yeast, I was armed to do a re-brew of one of my all-time favorite homebrews of mine: the Prairie Artisan Ales 'Merica clone, originally brewed almost two years ago.

That beer - a SMaSH Saison brewed with Pilsner malt and hopped heavily with Nelson Sauvin, and dosed with Brettanomyces at bottling - was a real winner. Juicy and tropical, dry, and a touch of funk from the Brett (I actually split the batch, dosing half with Brett and leaving the other half without), it was definitely one of my homebrew highlights of 2013, and likely in the top 10 of all-time. I put the recipe together based on some info I found online (mostly through the brewery's website); after I posted the recipe, they tweeted back to me a couple of recommended minor adjustments to the hop schedule. Since then, I've been wanting to rebrew it, which is what I finally planned to do for my solo summer brew day.

I was initially going to do the exact same recipe, but with everything scaled down to a lower-ABV beer. My 'Merica clone had an OG target of 1.056; the non-Brett portion finished at 1.006, for an ABV of 6.7%. This time, I aimed for 1.048. No particular reason, I just didn't really need a higher-ABV beer. Otherwise, I planned on following Prairie's recommendations... but I changed my mind very close to brew day, and made several alterations:

1) I decided to back off the Nelson a little bit, and add two more varieties, Citra and Centennial. Not that I have anything against Nelson; quite the contrary! However, it IS an extremely expensive and hard to obtain hop, and I really wanted to play with a combination of the three. These three varieties were used in my Societe Brewing The Pupil clone I brewed last year, and worked great together. I wanted to see what this combination would be like with a Saison yeast. Note from the recipe below that Nelson is still the most-used hop.

2) I went with a hopping schedule more similar to my first beer then Prairie's recommendations. Not because I think mine would work better, but because I know my original one worked well on my system the first time. The minor changes include a very small hop addition at 60 minutes (I used Nelson because the package was open; at only 7 grams, I figured it wasn't a big deal to use it), and I took out the 5-minute addition.

3) I added a dry-hop addition; the first (Nelson and Centennial) would be in primary, and the second (Nelson and Citra) a keg-hop before transferring to the serving keg. Not that the first beer didn't have tons of hop flavour and aroma; I just wanted to really try to maximize the hop presence, and see if a keg-hop addition would boost it even more.

So, this beer ended up being more "inspired by" my original clone than a simple rebrew. The mash temp was kept the same as before (151 F). When I went to weigh out the grains (and mill them) the night before brewing, I realized I was almost completely out of Acid malt. Now, I didn't use any Acid malt when I brewed the 'Merica clone, but I use it for almost all my beers now to adjust mash pH. I had planned on using close to 2.5% of the grist as Acid malt, but I only had a mere 22 g on hand... that's about 0.5%. Even with the bump up of salt additions to the mash this time around, my mash pH was still calculated to be higher than I would like (I usually try to target 5.4 or so). But at this point, there was no changing it, so I just had to accept it.

Otherwise, the day went well. My OG came in a bit high (1.051), but I was ok with that. I pitched the yeast at about 64 F and decided to just let it go on its own; being a Saison yeast (Wyeast 3711 French Saison, my typical go-to Saison yeast), I wasn't worried about it getting over 70 F. A couple days after pitching, it got up to 76 F, and started dropping slowly the next day as active fermentation petered out. After close to two weeks, the first round of dry-hops were added to primary, then the beer was racked to the designated dry-hop keg, where the second addition was thrown in. Transferred to the serving keg after another 4-5 days, and carbed.

I have to say that, despite being a very tasty beer, I prefer the original 'Merica clone. This beer DOES have plenty of tropical fruit and citrus in both the aroma and taste, and the Nelson is quite apparent (being so dominant as usual), but it was just SO in your face when used completely on its own... in a wonderful, wonderful way. I also find this beer to have a slight carbonic bite in the finish; the bitterness isn't too high, but there's just something that was a tad bit off.

In the end, though, still a really good beer, I think. We had no problem polishing this keg off a few weeks ago (I really have to start posting more), and I think lovers of hoppy Saisons would be impressed with the hop presence in this beer. If you can get your hands on some Nelson and Citra, give it a try!

Recipe Targets: (5.5 gallons, 75% efficiency) OG 1.048, FG ~1.004, IBU ~45, SRM 3.5, ABV ~6%

Grains:
4.25 kg (99.5%) Pilsner
22 g (0.5%) Acid malt

Hops:
Nelson Sauvin - 7 g (11.6% AA) @ 60 min
Nelson Sauvin - 28 g @ 10 min

Citra - 28 g @ 0 min (with a 15 min hop steep)
Nelson Sauvin - 42 g @ 0 min (with a 15 min hop steep)

Centennial - 40 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)
Nelson Sauvin - 42 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)

Citra - 28 g dry-hop for 5 more days (keg)
Nelson Sauvin - 42 g dry-hop for 5 more days (keg)

Misc: 1/2 tab Irish Moss at 5 min

Yeast: Wyeast 3711 French Saison (with a starter)

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; 3 g Gypsum and 5 g calcium chloride added to mash

- Brewed on July 29th, 2015, by myself. 50-minute mash with 13 L of strike water, mashed in at target of 151 F. Mashed-out for 10 minutes with 6.5 L of boiling water. Sparged with ~4.5 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of ~7.25 gallons.

- SG 1.038 (target 1.036). 90-minute boil. Final volume ~5.75 gallons; OG high at 1.051. Chilled to low-60s F, then poured into Better Bottle. Aerated with 60 seconds of pure O2, pitched yeast starter at 64 F.

- Great fermentation over the first few days, temp hovering around 70 F for the first day, eventually rising to as high as 76 F by the second day. Began to slow after day 3, temp dropping only slightly ever day. FG finally reached as low as 1.003.

- Added first round of dry hops to primary on August 11th; five days later, racked to CO2-purged dry-hop keg and added second dry hops. Cold-crashed five days later and transferred to serving keg and began carbing with CO2.

Appearance: Pours with a moderate-sized head that quickly fades to 1/2-finger... too fast for the style. Body is a light yellow color, and quite hazy/murky (I assume from all the dry-hopping). Not the prettiest beer.

Aroma: Nice smack of tropical hop goodness, with a fair amount of citrus in there, too. There is definitely a background of Belgian phenolic spiciness from the yeast, but various fruit wins out by far.

Taste: Ditto; very tropical and citrusy. Nelson sticks out more than anything else with its characteristic gooseberry flavour, but this beer has more citrus than the first iteration, with a little spicy phenolics backing it all up. Moderate bitterness in the finish; bit of a carbonic bite. Quite dry.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light bodied, with carbonation that borders somewhere between medium and medium-low... could definitely be higher for the style.

Overall: Very enjoyable, but in the end I'd have to say I prefer my straight 'Merica clone, i.e. all Nelson Sauvin.

Tasting : 'Merica vs. 'Anada

Ok, I apologize right now for these tasting notes taking as long as they have, because when I originally posted my brew notes for this Prairie Artisan Ales 'Merica clone, the post had a lot of attention. Seems like a lot of homebrewers out there love this beer, and would like to try cloning it themselves.

As mentioned in the original post, I decided against bottling this beer with two strains of Brett, as Prairie does. Instead, I dry-hopped and bottled half the beer "plain", and added Brett bottle dregs (from some commercial beers) to the other half in secondary; after the FG got down to 1.001, I dry-hopped and bottled that half. This is why I've waited to post the tasting notes - I wanted to compare both beers to each other, and to the actual 'Merica itself.

Well, in a nutshell, the beer came out pretty fantastic. Even though my hopping schedule was off (Prairie corrected me AFTER I had brewed the beer and posted the recipe), with the dry-hop being only half of what it should have been, the beer has a HUGE Nelson Sauvin presence, in both aroma and flavor. Wow. I just wanted to shove my nose in this beer and keep it there all day... such a massive blast of tropical berries, with a bit of dank. Nelson may now be my new favorite hop variety.

Now that most of the plain beers are gone, I just started drinking the Bretted version, and honestly there's not a huge difference. I didn't get a lot of Brett character from 'Merica when I first had it, so I'm not too surprised, even though I took a different approach. I actually prefer the non-Brett half, because all that time in secondary diminished the Nelson a bit. Still a great beer, but if you brew this recipe, I encourage you to drop the Brett addition if it means more trouble/money for you.

So, the comparison you see in the picture is with the Bretted version of my homebrew, vs. 'Merica. Below are my notes on my beer, compared to the real deal...

Appearance: Poured with a moderate-large, fluffy white head that has very good retention (despite the picture). Body is a light orange color, and very hazy. The two beers look basically identical; I'd say my homebrew is just a hair darker and hazier.

Aroma: Intensely-fruity, with a strong berry component. Like sticking your nose into a big bowl of tropical fruit, with a touch of dank thrown in. Wonderful-smelling, one of the best-smelling beers I’ve ever brewed. The 'Merica is very similar, but has less fruit/hops and a bit more dankness/funkiness to it... it's hard to place (my wife mentioned "like feet").

Taste: Big berry flavor as well, with just a touch of spiciness - I assume from the yeast - to complement. It’s pretty much all-Nelson for the most part, although I’m sure the fruity character from the yeast is combining with the hop component. Medium-low bitterness, with a dry finish. Again, the 'Merica is very similar, but has less hops and more of that dank/funky character that I can't quite put my finger on.

Mouthfeel: Light-bodied, medium-high carbonation... yet, smooth, and not too prickly. Pretty much bang-on with the 'Merica.

Overall/Final Thoughts: This homebrew came out fantastic... it'd probably be up there in my top 3 or 5 beers I've brewed. I find it very similar to 'Merica, but with a bit more hop presence. However, I can't tell when the bottle of 'Merica I had was bottled, and I purchased it 2 months ago, so it could be an age thing. I also have no idea what yeast strain 'Merica uses; if they bottle condition this beer, it may help to actually culture some yeast from a bottle. However, I'm completely happy with the "clone" the way it came out; I don't even think it'd be necessary to double the dry-hop to match up with Prairie's recipe.

Brewing a Prairie Artisan Ales 'Merica clone

In September, my wife and I were lucky enough to make another trip to San Diego, one of the beer meccas of the U.S. Despite being accompanied by our 16-month-old daughter, we did pretty well in the beer department, I thought; I personally had 36 new beers during the week we were there. Along with trips to the San Diego Zoo and several beaches, we also visited Modern Times, Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens (Liberty Station location), Pizza Port Ocean Beach, and a few choice beer bars, such as Toronado.

As expected, many of the beers I had were fantastic... lots of very hoppy IPAs and DIPAs were consumed! However, one of my favorite beers of the trip was a hoppy Saison brewed by a fairly new brewery called Prairie Artisan Ales... out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yep. Oklahoma. They brew many different types of Saisons; the one I had was called 'Merica. It was fabulously grassy and fruity, with a good amount of funk in both the aroma and flavor. When I arrived home, the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast I had ordered from my LHBS arrived; I had originally planned on brewing a Modern Times Lomaland clone, or some other Saison, but I decided to attempt to put together a 'Merica clone recipe.

Searching the internet for other attempts at 'Merica clones turned up nothing. There IS some helpful info on Prairie's website, however:

"‘Merica is a single malt, single hop saison. It’s brewed with floot malted pilsner and 3lbs per bbl Nelson Sauvin hops. The beer is conditioned with 2 brett strains and wine yeast."

While I've never brewed with Nelson Sauvin hops before, I just happened to have 8 oz of it from an order I made with Yakima Valley Hops a few months ago... 3 lbs/bbl equates to about 8 oz for a 5 gallon batch. Perfect! It was meant to be (Disclaimer: If you put your mind to it, you can convince yourself of anything in homebrewing). Nelson Sauvin is a New Zealand variety hop that has been quickly growing in popularity over the past few years. It is well-known for a strong fruity flavor and aroma: gooseberries, passionfruit and grapefruit, or a Sauvignon Blanc (white wine) character.

I thought I'd try sending a direct message to Prairie's Facebook account, asking for a bit more help with the recipe, but unfortunately they didn't respond. I mainly wanted to get a rough idea of the hop schedule, and find out whether the beer was dry-hopped or not (I assumed it was, from the strong aroma). I dug around a little more, and found the IBUs (35) listed on the Shelton Bros. (beer importers) site; they also note that the beer is "heavily dry-hopped". After a little more searching on Prairie's website, I found that their Standard Saison (their "everyday" beer) is dry-hopped with 1 lb/bbl of Motueka, another New Zealand hop variety. I figured this was a good number to shoot for in the dry-hopping of my 'Merica clone, which amounts to about 2.5 oz for 5 gallons.

The grist of the recipe was easy, obviously - 100% pilsner malt - with 3 grams of Gypsum thrown in the mash, just to increase the calcium levels of my water a little. As for the hop-schedule, however, I was on my own. When you're hopping a beer to about 35 IBUs with 8 oz in a 5 gallon batch, and the hop variety has an alpha acid % of 11... well, it seems to me that you pretty much have to avoid any early hop additions, or the IBUs on the beer are going to end up being too high. I fooled around with the additions on Beersmith, and decided to go with three at increasing amounts: 1 oz at 10 minutes, 2 oz at 5 minutes, and 2.5 oz at flameout, with a 15-minute hop steep. That should get me roughly around 35 IBUs... and hopefully one hell of a lot of hop flavor and aroma. And a lot of hop sludge leftover.

Now, while I've brewed with Brettanomyces in the past, I've never strictly bottle-conditioned with it. Because Brett is capable of fermenting carbohydrates with as many as nine molecules of glucose (compared to brewer's yeast max of three molecules long), it can slowly chew away at leftover sugars in the beer for months, and even years, producing more CO2, increasing the risk of gushing and bottle bombs.

Don't get me wrong, lots of breweries bottle condition with Brett, and it certainly doesn't always result in exploding bottles. Orval is probably the most well-known Brett-bottle-conditioned beer out there; I've opened bottles that were over three years old, and there hasn't been any gushing at all... just fantastic, mouth-watering funkiness! For the homebrewer, the two main issues when adding Brett at bottling are how MUCH Brett do you add, and how much bottling sugar, if any?

There's some good articles out there about approaches to take (check out this one from The Mad Fermentationist), but I'm going to keep it simple for myself, and take the safe route. I decided on splitting the batch in two from the very beginning: 

• Half will have the bottle dregs from several Brett beers pitched in over time. I'll try to start pitching the dregs before the 3711 is completely done fermenting, because in my experience with it, it can ferment LOW, which wouldn't leave much in the way of sugars behind for the Brett to work on. Not a very accurate approach, but hopefully it'll be ok. When the gravity seems to have plateaued, I'll dry-hop for a week or so and then bottle it as-is.

• The other half will be fermented with JUST the 3711, dry-hopped for a week, and bottled without Brett. I figure this is a good way to a) have a Saison to drink a little earlier, and b) compare the qualities that the Brett hopefully adds to the other half.

I'm not really sure what the added wine yeast at bottling provides to the beer, but I'll probably add a little dry wine yeast that I have on hand, at least to the Brett-half, just for the heck of it. Some of Prairie's beers are starting to show up in Maine, I believe, so hopefully I'll find a bottle of 'Merica when I'm there later in the month to compare to my results.

UPDATE: After I tweeted the link to this post, Prairie responded back about the hop schedule. They say they use a 60-minute bittering addition (so, it would have to be very small), and 1 lb/bbl whirlpool, 2 lb/bbl dry-hop. This translates to 2.5 oz Nelson at flameout for a 5-gallon batch, and 5 oz for dry-hopping. So, I was right for the whirlpool, but added hops at 5 & 10 minutes that should have gone into the dry-hop, for the most part. 

Recipe targets: (5.5 gallons, 75% efficiency) OG 1.056, FG ~1.007, IBU ~35, SRM 4, ABV ~6.5%

Grains:
5 kg (100%) Bohemian Pilsner

Hops:
Nelson Sauvin - 28 g (11% AA) @ 10 min
Nelson Sauvin - 56 g @ 5 min
Nelson Sauvin - 70 g @ flameout (steeped for 15 minutes)
Nelson Sauvin - 78 g dry-hop for 7 days (divided in two, 39 g for each half-batch)

Misc.: 1/2 tab Irish moss @ 5 min

Yeast: Wyeast 3711 French Saison (with a 1.5 L starter)

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; 3 g Gypsum in the mash

- Brewed on October 7th, 2013, by myself. 60-minute mash with 16.5 L of strike water, mashed in a little under target temp of 151 F. Sparged with 5.5 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of ~7.5 gallons in the kettle.

- SG at 1.044, slightly over target of 1.042. 90-minute boil. Final volume a bit over 5.5 gallons. Flameout hops steeped for 15 minutes, then turned on immersion chiller. Chilled down to 64 F, then poured ~10 L into 3-gallon Better Bottle, and the rest into a 6-gallon BB (lots of trub got into this half). OG on target of 1.056. Aerated with 60 seconds of pure O2 for each half, and placed in laundry room, ambient temp about 72 F.

- 8/10/13 - 14/10/13 - Over this week, visible fermentation was never fast and furious, bubbling about 3-4 times per 10 seconds in the airlock, temp 70 F.  Gravity got down to 1.009, so I attached a heat belt to the non-Brett portion and turned it on, bringing the temp up to the high 70s. Pitched the bottle dregs of two bottles of Orval into Brett portion.

- 25/10/13 - Added dry hops to non-Brett portion directly into primary.

- 29/10/13 - Bottled non-Brett portion with 85 g table sugar, aiming for 3 vol CO2 for 10 L and a max temp of 78 reached.

- 4/11/13 - Over the next few weeks, pitched bottle dregs of three more bottles of Orval and one bottle of Allagash Confluence. Racked Brett portion into secondary on Nov. 12th.

- 28/11/13 - Added dry-hops to Brett portion into secondary fermentor.

- 4/12/13 - Bottled Brett portion with 67 g table sugar (and ~1/8 pack Lalvin EC-1118 rehydrated yeast... a white wine yeast, unfortunately realized I didn't have any red wine yeast), aiming for 3 vol CO2 for 2.13 gallons with a max temp of 78 F reached.

- 24/12/13 - Tasting notes... damn, what a delicious beer! Huge Nelson presence, lots of fruit (berries, specifically)... amazing! Close to the real thing, but more hoppy and lacking a bit of hard-to-place funkish character.