I was keeping the recipe pretty similar over the years but it's time for a redesign. One reason is because due to advances in my brewing skills, the beer developed from a 7% pintable strong ale to an 8.8% malty whack-in-the-face. It's time to rein that in a little.
Also 20% specialty malts are just insane. The BE-134 Saison yeast is the unsung hero of this beer and everything that keeps it from being a cloying specialty malt soup. I want to make its life a little easier.
Anyway, I keep most of the malts in the recipe but change the ratios a bit. I am going with:
65% Pilsner Malt
30% Vienna Malt
3% Melanoidin Malt and
2% Caramünch 2
That should still give me the maltiness that I like without being too overpowering.
I also throw some wheat flakes on that because of head retention, some farmhouse rusticity and because their best before date is passed and they seriously need to go 😅
And I'm done mashing in. I won't do anything fancy for mashing, just a protein rest at 53°C for 10 minutes and a combined rest at 65°C for an hour. I could use a more complicated step mash schedule but since the beer will have enough body due to its 7% ABV and enough head retention due to the wheat flakes and since the Saison yeast will ferment all unfermentable sugars anyway, I decided to take the lazy approach and mash for a bit of head retention and a lot of fermentability.
For hops I was going to use that wild workhorse variety but it turns out, I don't have any left here, so I just go with 42g of that Hallertauer Whatnot and 8g of Cascade. Feels very farmhousy to just brew with what you have at hand. Also I increased the amout of hops a bit to raise its profile from "barely detectable" to "definitely present".
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