This is a simple grisette using 2-row instead of the traditional pilsner base malts. This one was also an accidental trial run for pH balancing in the mash. I used citric acid, which will have a presence in the final beer.

Recipe

Malts and Sugars

• 5# Great Western 2-row
• 1# 10oz Weyerman White Wheat Malt
• 6oz Weyerman Pale Wheat Malt
• 4oz Steel-cut oats
• 2oz Rice hulls

Hops

• 0.55 oz (11 IBU) — Cascade 7% — Boil — 60 min
• 0.3 oz (10 IBU) - El Dorado 11.6% - Boil - 30 min
• 0.3 oz (6 IBU) - El Dorado 11.6% - Boil - 15 min

Yeast

• White Labs Belgian Saison I

Water Modifications

I again made no water modifications. I did add 1/2 campden tablet per 5 gallons of brewing water 1 hour before brewing in order to remove chlorine.

Recipe available on BrewFather here

Brewday Notes

Outside temperature is in the 80 and 90s.

I pre-heated the mash tun with a gallon or so of 190F water while the strike water was warming up.

Infused the mash at 159F. Mash temp was 150F at 20 minutes (which is higher than expected due to high outdoor temperatures).

Mash pH was higher than yesterday at 6.1 at 20 minutes. I added the 3/4 tsp of citric acid, which is the only acid I had on hand and the mash dropped to 5.74 Unfortunately, the citric acid is nearly guaranteed to have a presence in the final beer. However, the citrus from the El Dorado may work well with it.

I mashed for 75 minutes instead of 60.

I also did a mash-out with 5.75 liters of boiling water to get temps up to 161F.

I sparged as normal, but then did a second sparge using runnings from the sparge to extract more sugars after my poor mash efficiency of yesterday.

Fermentation

Yeast was pitched almost immediately after the wort reached 84F.

Aug 25th Fermentation seems to be extremely active and there is a large krausen already formed at 7AM.

Aug 26th The krausen has already dropped and fermentation seems to be slowing down.

Sept 20th Fermentation is mostly complete, but there is still airlock activity every few hours.

Sept 22nd I pulled a sample and the gravity was down to 1.01 which should be as low as it goes with the oats.

Refractometer Readings

SG: 1.030

OG: 1.042

FG: 1.01

ABV: 4.2%

Tasting Notes

This turned out remarkably well. It has strong saison characteristics with prominent black pepper and spice notes. With the addition of higher unfermentable sugars it doesn't feel watery at this low ABV.