When I orderdered ingredients for this batch, I planned on making a pretty classic saison. I failed. This frequently happens to me because I order ingredients for multiple batches at a time to keep shipping costs down. Because I don’t brew that often, a few months will sometimes pass between planning a batch and actually brewing it. With this batch two things happened. The season changed from late summer to early winter, and I read “Homebrewers Almanac”.

With the holidays coming on, I thought it would be nice to make something slightly maltier and I also realized I had some Special B lying around and the burnt sugar flavor would be really nice in a holiday ale. In late October I read Homebrewers Almanac and the section about lavendar noted that the stem and leaves was at least as useful as the flowers. I went to our balcony and collected the last dying remains of our lavendar plant and put them away to dry out completely.

Going through my hop stash, I found some old CTZ that still smelled really nice so I decided to use it up and give some nice dank notes to the beer. I calculated the adjusted alpha acid level to be almost halved but that just meant more hop flavor without excessive bitterness. Adding all this to what I had originally bought for the batch, I was ready to go.

Recipe

OG: 1.061

FG: 1.003

IBU: 31

Mash: 65C mash in, leave overnight

52% Pilsner

32% Vienna

5% Special B

11% Table Sugar

0.77 g/l CTZ (10% AA), 60 minutes

0.4 g/l Lavendar leaves and stems (dried), 40 minutes, in mesh bag

0.85 g/l CTZ (10% AA), 15 minutes

BE134 Safbrew Belgian Ale yeast, fermented at 19C for 3 days, then at 22C for 10 more days.

Brew day

The brew day went smooth enough that I did not think of taking any photos. When I had cooled the wort down and tasted the gravity sample I noted that this beer was going to be special, although I was not yet sure whether that was in a good or a bad way. Besides tasting like sweet wort, it already had a noticable lavendar flavor which got me pretty excited to see how this batch would turn out. Noting that this yeast was diastatic, I let fermetation go for a full two weeks, and then bottled and conditioned as usual.

Impressions

I am going to refer to lavendar as a flavor and smell here and when I do, I don’t mean the perfumy smell you get from the flowers or from lavendar soap. If you ever rubbed lavendar leaves between your fingers, that is it, or if you walked past lavendar plants on a hot summer day and felt that dry spicy smell. If you never did, it is a spicy smell, reminiscent of cinnamon and cloves.

This beer pours a nice, clear, dark red color. It has a little bit of head that unfortunately disappears pretty quickly. The aroma is dry, spicy lavendar with a slight touch of minerals. At the end I get a whif of light fruity esters.

The flavor is pretty complex and the ingredients intermingle nicely. First to hit you is the dry, almost woody, spice from the lavendar and the yeast. In the middle I get cherry and grape skin, most likely from the lavendar or the Special B malt. At the end there is some dank and grapefruity notes from the hops, followed by a long spicy aftertaste. The bitterness is appropriate for such a dry beer, but the beer as a whole comes off a little bit too sweet despite finishing so low. Althogh the lavendar was supposed to be the feature of this beer, it is a little too prominent and the other ingredients get to play only supporting roles.

Conclusion

Considering this batch was pretty experimental, I’m happy with how it turned out. It is definitely not the classic, dry, refreshing saison I initially planned, but with its sweet spicyness it is definitely fit for the holidays and certainly easier to drink than you regular sweet holiday ale. I was once again reminded why I like Special B in small doses together with estery yeast. The grape-like character it creates is really great, although I did not get any of the burnt sugar flavor I wanted. Speaking of esters, I tend to like beers on the more estery side and next time I use BE-134 I will probably bump the temperature a degree C or two to see what happens.

I don’t think I will brew something quite like this again, but I will certainly use components of this recipe in the future for different purposes. Changes I will make is definitely swap at least half the vienna for wheat to reduce sweetness and improve head retention. And even if I wanted to make another beer that features lavendar I would dial it back, probably by 50%. But more likely I will use lavendar in even smaller doses to add a small twist to beers that would benefit from something extra. I’m thinking of possibly trying this on a small portion of my next stout.