The focus this time is on technique, and I'm going for a plain old pale ale. Even though the yeast is a saison blend, for no particular reason. Some new equipment debuted in this batch: a brew thermometer, a big stainless steel spoon, and a stainless steel immersion chiller.

Ingredients

• 3 pounds Briess Golden Light dried malt extract
• 3 pounds Briess Sparkling Amber dried malt extract
• 2 oz Cascade hops pellets
• WLP568 Belgian Saison Yeast Blend

Brew day — 12 April 2015

10:30

Put 2 gallons of bottled water on to boil. Cleaned everything with PBW; rinsed; sanitized with 5 gallons of idophor solution in the fermentation bucket.

11:20

Water at the boil. Cut the heat and added all the dried malt extract and about 1¾ oz hops; stirred until everything was dissolved and put the heat back on. Kept wort at a steady simmer just at 100℃.

12:30

Made up an ice water bath in a 3-gallon bucket. Cut the heat and added the remaining hops. Stirred well. Used the auto siphon to pump ice water bath through the immersion chiller; target temperature was about 24℃ for pitching the yeast. Got a fairly rapid drop from boiling to about 60℃. That used up all the ice; replacing the water bath with cold tap water and adding another gallon of bottled water helped a bit, but the tap water itself is about 24℃ and the temperature of the wort only dropped to about 50℃ from that. At that point, I figured the best bet was to just put the wort in the refrigerator.

14:00

Wort in the fridge at about 32℃.

15:00

Wort at 30℃.

15:45

Got tired of waiting. Wort at 28℃. Sanitized the yeast vial and pitched the yeast into the empty fermentation vessel, and immediately poured the wort in. Poured the wort back and forth between the mash pot and the fermentation vessel several times, then topped the fermenter up to an estimated 5 gallons with bottled water. Sanitized the hydrometer and took a reading in the fermentation vessel at 8% sugar by weight, 4.2% potential alcohol by volume.

For next time

• Get a spray bottle for sanitizer
• Figure out a better cold water bath. Bag of ice sitting in a cooler?
• Calibrate my thermometer with boiling water

Tasting notes

This one was received well. I took it to a couple of get-togethers, and always got unsolicited comments about it being good. One other brewer commented about liking the saison yeast in particular.