Description
Intended to be a light, citrusy, slightly spicy, easy drinking summer beer. Something you want to put a slice of lemon into and enjoy in the sunshine.
Brew Day – 26Apr2015
I started this beer with a 1.2L yeast starter which was given approx 12 hours on the stir plate. There appeared to be strong growth in the starter.
I used a single infusion mash (no mash out) for this brew.
I ran into a couple of complications today. I couldn’t keep a steady boil. I thought it was due to the low ambient temperature (46*F at the start of the brew day), but I later came to find out that it was due to a low propane cylinder. Somewhere between 30 and 15 minutes, I lost my flame. I got a spare cylinder on the burner at the 15 minute mark and got it back up to a boil. But I’m not sure how much time I lost. The second oops of the day was as I was cooling the wort. Realizing that I had no idea what temperature I was at, I quickly grabbed my thermometer and dropped it in the wort. Only later did it hit me that I did not sanitize that thermometer. Hopefully, no little bugs were hanging on. The sparge also had issues. The grain was crushed to fine, which made it very hard to get clear runnings from the mash tun. By the time I was happy with it, the sparge water had to have been cooled off several degrees. The sparge also took exceptionally long. This may account for the low OG.
For the lemon zest, I only had one lemon. So, I zested the thing right down to the fruit. The entire peel is in the beer. The aroma from this was amazing, hopefully it comes through in the final product.
The initial tasting has me worried that this is going to be overly bitter. The Amarillo really shows through at this point. It will be interesting to see how well this mellows through fermentation and conditioning. The lemon flavor is lightly present. The wort isn’t overly sweet (again, as shown by the low OG). Again, I wonder if this will be more bitter than intended.
OG: 1.048
FG: 1.005
ABV: 5.6%
Final Product
Nailed it! This was the perfect summer beer. So much so that it was gone before summer really got here. It was crisp, slightly tart, lightly bittered, a hint of citrus… delicious!
Style Information
Grains & Extracts
| Name | Amount |
|---|---|
| Torrified Wheat (Grain) | 0.5 lb |
| Vienna (DE) (Grain) | 4 lb |
| Pilsner (BE) (Grain) | 7 lb |
Hops
| Name | Amount | Alpha Acid% | AAU | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amarillo (US) | 0.5 oz | 9.3% | 4.65 | 60 |
| Amarillo (US) | 0.5 oz | 9.3% | 4.65 | 30 |
| Popular American mid-range alpha acid variety with a unique and distinct aroma discovered growing "wild" (spontaneously) in one of their hop yards and developed by Virgil Gamache Farms in late 20th century. Also known as VGX001, its strain number. It is registered Brand VGXP01 cv. | ||||
| Saaz (CZ) | 0.5 oz | 3.25% | 1.63 | 15 |
| Saaz (CZ) | 0.50 | 3.25% | 1.63 | 0 |
Adjuncts
| Name | Type | Use | Amount | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lemon Zest | Boil | 1 Lemons | 0 | |
| Added to boil at flame out. | ||||
Yeasts
| Name | Amount |
|---|---|
| French Saison 3711 |
Mash Steps
| Name | Step Type | Step Time | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mash with 3.82 gal of water at 168*F strike temp for a mash temp of 154*F for 60 minutes. | 60 | 168 | |
| Sparge with 5.12 gal of water at 170*F strike temp for a sparge temp of 168*F until complete. | 60 | 170 |
Boil
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