Beets Gone Wild | Saison 7%

Grain Bill

20lbs Pilsner 2-row malt
1lb 3.2ozs Vienna malt
1lb 3.2ozs Wheat malt
9.6ozs Caramunich malt
8ozs Munich malt
3ozs Styrian Goldings @45mins
1oz East Gent Goldings @15mins
4lbs of beets chopped @20mins left in the boil
5pkgs Belgian Saison (Wyeast Labs #3724)

Inspiration

My cousin Brett “Brettman” Williams owns a brewery in Denver called Little Machine Beer.  Prior to opening Little Machine he was the head brewer at Dry Dock Brewery.  Personally I never drank Saisons but a Facebook post about his Beet Saison got me curious.  I started ordering saisons and found a number I really liked so after a quick education by email on Saisons I decided to give a Beet Saison a try.

Brew Notes

I pulled a bunch of the beets out of the wort to see how they would taste (I love beets) and they were VERY bitter.  Actually really hard to eat.  All in all I really like the results of the beer but if I were to brew this again I would not boil the beets for as long as I did.  Next time I would put them in with 5mins left in the boil.  The resulting beer was very earthy and I ended up working with Jeremiah (known as the beer savant in my house) at Strange Brew to adjust post fermentation with citric and tartaric acid in a 2:1 ratio.  The addition of the acid moved the flavour from earthy to more berry like.