Farmhouse Brett Saison w/ Styrian Golding Brewday

This beer is the second run on the ECY03 Farmhouse Brett (Saison Blend); I went with a more traditional hop for this one, mainly because I had just gotten a pound of Styrian Goldings from Hops Direct, and wanted to try them out.

135. Farmhouse Brett Saison w/ Styrian Golding

Mash:

8 lbs. MFB Pale
1 lb. MFB Vienna
1 lb. Breiss White Wheat
½ lb. Old Fashioned Oatmeal

Mash @ 150° F for 60 minutes w/ 3 ½ gallons of RO water & 2 g. gypsum; collected 2 gallons @ 1.072
Batch sparge @ 167° F for 20 minutes w/ 4 ½ gallons RO water & 2 g. gypsum; collected 4 ½ gallons @ 1.024

Collected 6 ½ gallons; brought to a boil (60 minutes), & added:
w/60 to go: 2 oz. Styrian Golding leaf 2.9% AA

w/15 to go: 1 oz. Styrian Golding leaf 2.9% AA

w/5 to go: 8 oz. table sugar
4 g. crushed coriander
2 g. crushed seed of paradise
2 g. crushed cumin seed

w/0 to go: 1 oz. Styrian Golding leaf 2.9% AA

Rested 15 minutes, chilled, racked onto ECY03 Farmhouse Brett (Saison Blend) cake from 133. Farmhouse Brett Saison w/ Comet

Brewed: 12/6/2012
Secondary: 3/13/2013 @ 1.002; dry hop w/ 2 oz. Styrian Golding leaf 2.9% AA
Bottled: 3/18/2013 w/ 4.25 oz. table sugar

OG: 1.054 @ 73° F
FG: 1.002

Tasting Notes (4/28/2013): Farmhouse Brett Saison w/ Styrian Goldings pours a clear tan with a white head and lots of tiny, streaming bubbles. The nose is spicy bright lemon and mint up front, with a delicate floral perfuminess behind it. It doesn’t yet have the brett earthiness or leather seen in 135. Flavors open with candy sweetness and lemon; in the middle there is a hint of mintiness and hop bitterness. There is a touch of tartness developing in the middle and on in to the final third of the beer; coupled with the mint hints, there is a slight breathy menthol note in the finish that is refreshing and bright, and pairs well with the spritzy carbonation. There is also a fleeting lemon/orange twang in the finish that merges seamlessly with the other flavors. The body is light and dry, although there is some residual sweetness (not mouthfeel) in the body that makes the beer appear bigger than it is; when I remake this, I am going to swap out the MFB Pale for MFB Pilsen, use a larger percentage of table sugar to further dry out the body, and cut the MFB Vienna in half; I might augment that with a ½ lb. of acidulated malt, but I’m not sure yet. I think this is a fantastic beer, specifically in regard to the delicate balance of hop and yeast flavors, but the current residual sweetness from both the MFB Pale and Vienna is a bit distracting. And it hurts me to say that; I like this beer better overall than 135, the earlier version with Comet. I think that Phil Markowski is on to something when he notes in Farmhouse Ales that one of the keys to a saison is a large amount of low AA hops; with the drier body, you get subtle complexity between yeast and hops that gets lost when using the larger AA hops. Sure, there can still be complexity, but it can get drowned out when hopping saisons like you would an American IPA. The one other thing I will do when I remake this is to use a hop with a slightly higher AA for the bittering addition, as 2.9% AA is low, even for Styrian Golding.