Saison w/ Tinctures Brewday

This beer began life as a plain ol’ regular saison. However, when I needed a guinea pig for our upcoming club Iron Brewer competition, I decided to toss this beer down the scullery stairs. Why, you may ask? I’ll tell you: this Iron Brewer called for putting some form of liquor (well, besides whisky, bourbon, or scotch) into any style of beer. I am not a fan of booze and beer, so I decided to make tinctures, and consider the combination my liquor addition. More bang for your buck, so to speak, and certainly more interesting than just adding straight booze. Thus, each of the three features a different alcohol and herb/botanical mix. I also forced myself to use the booze I had on hand—otherwise I would have used vodka as the base for at least one of these. The results of the tinctures were better than I expected when I added it at bottling. We’ll see how the final product turns out. 

198. Saison w/ Tinctures

Mash:

8 lbs. Best Malz Pilsen

4 lbs. Best Malz Wheat

Mash @ 149° F for 80 minutes w/ 4 gallons RO water & 8 g. gypsum; collected 2 ½ gallons @ 1.072

Batch sparge @ 162° F for 20 minutes w/ 4 gallons RO water; collected 4 gallons @ 1.024

Topped off to 7 gallons, brought to a boil (70 minutes), & added:

w/60 to go: 1 oz. Comet leaf 10.9% AA

1 oz. Styrian Golding pellet 2% AA

w/10 to go: 5 g. Wyeast yeast nutrient

w/5 to go: 2 oz. Styrian Golding pellet 2% AA

Let sit for 20 minutes; chilled & racked onto WLP 585 cake from 193. Barrel Project Saison

Brewed: 2/8/2015

Bottled: 2/28/2014

198a. one gallon w/ 1 oz. Bacardi, lime, and lemon zest & .8 oz. table sugar

198b. one gallon w/ 1 oz. Aquavit and sage tincture & .8 oz. table sugar

198c. one gallon w/ 1 oz. Cuervo, ginger, and hibiscus tincture & .8 oz. table sugar

Remaining saison was racked into a corny keg with the remains of 186b. for future experimentation

OG: 1.052

FG: 1.004

Tasting Notes:

416. New Holland Beerhive Tripel

Another from New Holland’s High Gravity Series, this one with honey and ginger combined with the Belgian Tripel format. This puts our running New Holland total at five: we’ve weighed in on El Mole Ocho, Dragon’s Milk and Golden Cap Saison, plus the magical bonus beer, Envious. Don’t be envious of the bonus beer. We don’t want no hating here.

Beerhive pours a bright, clear, buttery burnished copper with red highlights. The nose is a combination of juiciness and creamy perfuminess with a touch of both honey and ginger in the background. Some light fruitiness emerges with warmth, along with smaller amounts of spiciness, while the head is a creamy tan color. While it reduces to a thin cover, it does lace the glass decently. Flavors start sweet, with candy and honey in the front before moving into slight spiciness in the middle. There is a nice ginger tang in the turn to the finish that merges well with the slight carbonation bite, and the ginger spiciness (as distinct from the spiciness in the middle) lingers lightly on the palate. Beerhive has a medium body with a bright, effervescent mouthfeel; there is a slight alcohol warming in the finish, although it is slightly masked by the ginger spiciness. An interesting beer, but not as nuanced as we would have liked; the nose was more impressive than the flavors in the body, which were a bit flat across the spectrum. The ginger is still the prevalent flavor at this point; while we enjoy ginger (and I especially do), a beer this big needs more complexity—a lot of the Belgian characteristics from the yeast seem to be absent in the body, although somewhat present in the nose. Maybe another year or two would help, but as is it is not super-exciting.

From the bottle: “Little John’s local bees create a wildflower-honey which lends a sweet, earthy complexity to this traditional style beer. A snap of ginger provides a refreshing finish.”

ABV: 8.47%
OG: 19° P

(10/2/2010)

371. Hitachino Real Ginger Brew

“Their beers are good as soon as you accept they’re not gonna be what you want them to be.”

This is our first beer from Kiuchi Brewery in Ibaraki, Japan. We tried it mainly because of our love of a good ginger beer—Mount Island Desert Ginger from Atlantic Brewing Company is still the benchmark here, although I still miss the old label, which was so much cooler.

Real Ginger pours a clear caramel with an ivory tan head. The nose has a sweet candy caramel malt aroma coupled with some spicy ginger coupled. Flavors open with soft caramel and a bit of toffee before moving into a clean creamy middle with more sweetness and some herbal ginger flavors. The finish starts sweet, but dries out quickly, and has a slighty chalky or minerally characteristic and has a bit of a spicy ginger bite. Real Ginger has a medium body with a soft, creamy, and bready mouthfeel. The carbonation is medium, but there is not much of a presence across the profile. There is also a bit of an herbal spicy tang on the back of the throat as well, which corresponds to the spicy, dry bite in the finish. Real Ginger is a well-made, interesting beer; it’s the first Top 1o Best contender of the new year.

From the bottle: “Fresh ginger roots added to the brewkettle create an intriguing balance of ginger-spicy, sweet-malty and hop-dry flavors and aromas.”

From the Hitachino website (I think this is the most succint description from a brewery’s website that we’ve ever seen): “This Ginger Ale is brewed using fresh fragrant raw ginger.”

ABV: 7.0%
Malt: Marris Otter, Munich, Crystal, & Chocolate
Hops: Chinook, Perle, & Styrian Golding
IBU: 18
Specialty: Ginger

(7/6/2010)

104. Trade Route Ginger Pale Ale

Ginger Pale Ale comes from the Trade Route Brewing Company in Seattle, WA.

Trade Route Ginger Pale Ale has a ginger, citrus, and floral nose; it is hazy gold with a creamy white head. Starting with a soft malt front dominated by ginger and candy notes, Ginger Pale Ale drops into a rather neutral and flat middle before finishing with citrus and floral flavors. The mouthfeel is creamy and soft; the carbonation is quite spritzy—it creates a rough transition with the softer, creamier front of the beer. There is no discernable hop flavor, aroma, or bitterness, which we found a bit troubling. The label also calls this a “malt beverage,” which would further imply that there are no hops in the beer, which is a problem for a beer labeled a pale ale—what kind of pale ale has no hops? The malt profile is pretty bland and neutral; there is little to no depth to the malt flavor—it is mainly ginger, citrus, and then gone, and the orange flavor at the end is a bit too distracting. All of this is a fancy way of saying this one is a Top 10 Worst contender.

From the Trade Route website: “An appetizing beer brewed with fragrant ginger and Mandarin orange peel.”

(10/12/2009)