Saison has a rich history of constant evolution, making it one of the easiest and most enjoyable kinds of beer to make in your own way.
Besides capturing or developing your own culture, you can forage for herbs and spices, use homegrown fruits or vegetables, or dry hop with your favorite varieties. Try to incorporate something you particularly enjoy that represents your local terroir.
Grains
For your grains, go local, if possible. We’re lucky to have multiple small-batch craft maltsters in the Pacific Northwest, and local malt can be an important part of a saison that represents your local terroir.
If local grains aren’t available, I suggest using your favorite pilsner or other lower-kilned malt to emphasize the barley’s rustic nature. Keep in mind your mash efficiency may be lower than usual because of the unmalted wheat, depending on your malt’s diastatic power—our brewhouse efficiency can be closer to 60 percent when using this much unmalted grain.
In addition, you may need to run your unmalted wheat through the mill a couple of times; it’s typically smaller and harder than barley malt.
Hops
For hops, we like Lórien from Indie Hops here in Oregon. If that’s not available, I suggest using your favorite Noble-esque, lower-alpha variety.
Because we’re looking for a relatively small amount of IBUs, the lower alpha-acid content (about 4 percent) allows us to use more in the kettle for a distinct yet subtle hop presence in the finished beer.
Propping up Your Own Mixed Culture
We ferment all our Wild Saison beers with a mixed culture that we propagated via coolship here in central Oregon. We condition all our cans and bottles naturally with the same culture—so, if you can get our beers, you can culture up the dregs.
If you can’t get our beers, you can do the same with your own favorite mixed-culture beer—as long as you know that the brewery conditions with their mixed culture. You might need to reach out to the brewery and ask; some breweries will use another strain, such as champagne yeast, to package-condition.
Another option is to capture your own wild yeast and bacteria by using local fruit and/or wildflowers; submerge them in a small amount of starter wort until you see active fermentation, then proceed with this propagation schedule:
- Start by decanting and pitching about 40 ml of dregs from one can or bottle into 400 ml of fresh wort; set it on a stir plate at high speed for 48 hours. (If you don’t have a stir plate, you’ll have to occasionally agitate the wort manually to increase aeration and encourage cell growth.)
- After 48 hours, add another 400 ml of wort for a total volume of 800 ml, and return it to stir plate.
- After another 48 hours, add a final 1,200 ml of wort—for a total volume of two liters—then give it yet another 48 hours on the stir plate.
Now, you should have a healthy pitch ready to ferment about five gallons or 19 liters of wort.
Package Conditioning
After fermentation, there’s often still enough yeast in solution to ferment your priming sugar. However, I recommend making a quick 800-ml starter from your culture overnight. That ensures a healthy start to your conditioning process, which also will gobble up any extra oxygen introduced during packaging.
This process also greatly reduces the risk of developing off-flavors such as THP—which will go away over time, but it can take months.
Use a wine thief or similar tool to pull a small amount of slurry from the bottom of your fermentor and use a 1:10 ratio when calculating your starter size—for an 800-ml starter, pull 80 ml of slurry. Use a stir plate overnight and pitch with your priming sugar at packaging.
If you want, instead of dextrose, you can something like local honey to further contribute to the terroir of your beer.
This recipe, Edwin, is the base beer for our entire Wild Saison program—from there, the possibilities are endless. Have fun and hail saison!
