Pepper Sage Saison
So I finally got around to transferring the Saison to secondaries and I also committed to the spice addition.
So as the title suggests I decided on Black Pepper and Fresh Sage for the spice additions to half of the Saison, thus a Pepper Sage Saison. I went with a quarter of an ounce of pepper and a half ounce of sage. Hopefully neither will be totally overwhelming more so than too discrete. Last time I used black pepper I used an eighth of an ounce and I could barely tell it was there. And this was in five gallons of beer. The base beer tasted pretty good, a little sweet (kind of high final gravity), but it should be OK. So in about two weeks or so these will be kegged and ready to go. It’ll be cool if I have a bunch of wacky beers on tap at once, like the Grilled Pineapple Wheat, the Chocolate American Brown, and the Pepper Sage Saison, nice! So, we’ll see how this turns out, could be a pile of shit, could be exceptional. Would love to hear your thoughts after it’s ready. So far, it’s still more fun to take a couple of risks.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Very interesting combo…. As a chef, I think that will really work!
Keep us posted……
JF
August 27th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
This is just baffling me. Good luck with it.
In a similar vein, we have a bush that grows here in the Utah desert that people use to make something called Brigham tea. Not sure if it has a real name. It’s kind of bitter and almost “gamey.” I’ve been considering adding it to a porter but not sure if it’s worth wasting a perfectly good batch.
August 27th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
John – thanks, I think if nothing else I’ll have 5 gallons of a good marinade base, haha
Tyler – thanks for the comment, hopefully all goes well. I’ll keep all posted, I figure it’s Hero or Zero time on this one!
August 10th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
How did it turn out? The last few times I had beer that had “hints” of sage, it was overpowering and I didn’t enjoy it at all. Maybe since its homebrewed and you control the amount of sage it’ll turn out nice. Hope it did!
August 11th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Eric – it turned out OK. I know not the best review, but the problem wasn’t the spice addition it was the saison yeast I used. It crapped out real early and left the beer overly sweet. Some people loved it, some people not a big fan. Myself, if I brewed it again and the FG was lower I would keep the sage addition the same and kick the pepper addition up a bit, maybe add a second pepper for more dimension.
August 11th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
That sucks that after all that work, the yeast ended up messing everything up. It seems that you enjoy the sage flavor, do you know any mainstream sage beers that are worth trying? Seems like if all the ingredients were right, it might turn out pretty good.
August 12th, 2011 at 8:03 am
Dogfish Head, Victory, and Stone did a collaboration brew called Saison du Buff that used sage that was pretty good. Theirs reminded me of soap a little bit, but for a commercial example it was pretty good. More info here: http://www.stonebrew.com/news/100225pr/