Welcome This Is a Farmhouse, Saison Mead Recipe

[meadist]

I'm about 5 months into this mead, and It tastes great, but I feel like it can be refined. Let me know what you think of my recipe. Any feedback to make it better?
Ingredients

• 3 gal water
• 6 lbs Orange Blossom Honey
• 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• Wyeast 3711 French Saison Yeast
• 1 Lemon
• 2 oz Saaz Pellet Hops
• 3/4 cup Corn Sugar

Directions

1. In a large brew pot, boil 3 gallons of water.
2. With the pot removed from the burner, add 2 lbs honey. Make sure to stir the water so the honey dissolves completely and doesn't burn on the botttom of the pot. When the honey fully dissolved, return the pot to the burner.
3. As the liquid starts boiling again, add 1/2 0z Saaz pellet hops, boil for 15 minutes then add another ½ oz Saaz hops for another 15 min.
4. At the end of the boil, remove the pot from the burner and let cool to about 90 degrees fahrenheit. Add and dissolve the remaining 4 lbs of honey along with the juice of one lemon.
5. Add the must to a primary fermenter, aerate the heck out of it, and pitch the yeast.
6. After 2 weeks, with a siphon, re-rack the mead into a sanitized 3 gallon carboy.
7. Add the remaining 1 oz of hops in a muslin bag to the secondary.
8. After 2 weeks, re-rack, then let age for 4 months.
9. Dissolve the corn sugar in 1 cup warm water and add to carboy.
10. Fill sanitized bottles and let age for another 2 weeks.
11. ...For added interest:
    I like to split my three gallon batches into individual 1 gal carboys for varied aging techniques. For this, I made one gallon as the recipe states above, the second with orange peel, and the third with orange peel and French Oak Cubes.

The full Saison Mead Recipe can be found here.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

Oh cool! I just started a Peppercorn Saison mead just last week. Interesting how you can take "saison mead' and get two very different recipes.

 

[HawleyFarms]

Did a variation of this recipe to make my hopped saison cyser. Love the recipes from the meadist.com blog.

 

[robotinc]

Why dry hop and then age for four months and not aged for four months, then dry hop? Wouldn't you get a fresher hop character that way?

 

[Psylocide]

Do you have cluster flies?

I heard this time of year is bad.

 

[HawleyFarms]

I ended up using far more hops in the boil and did not dry hop. Fermented for 2 weeks, cold crashed 48 hours then primed and bottled. At two weeks in the bottle it tasted great. Search Drunken Farmer's Saison Cyser

 

[Yeroc]

Does the saison yeast give the same flavors & aromas to mead that it would in beer?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[HawleyFarms]

I haven't tried fermenting it at as high of temps as you would a saison beer. I think you would get a lot more of the spice characters similar to a saison beer. I fermented between 65-70 when I made my hopped cyser.

I did ask loveofrose about his belgian or french saison bomm trial though when I first tried belle saison on a cyser and he noted it was never 'drinkable' with a sulfur smell and peppery. I thought maybe it was because I was making cyser that made it better but I am on trial 5 with belle saison and they have all been really good with or without apple juice. The hopped saison cyser was fantastic after 1 month start to finish.

I am going to start a smoked maple saison tonight and see what I can come up with on a non mead brew.

 

[GurraG]

HawleyFarms, I am planning on making a BOMM type mead with dry yeast, and Belle saison is on my shortlist, since it can take higher temperatures. Have you made any traditional meads with belle saison? If so, how did they turn out?

 

[HawleyFarms]

I have a 3 gallon batch of my own quick mead that has been sitting for awhile. Haven't had time to check on it but need to re-rack it ASAP. Will let you know. Started a thread on dry yeast bomms back in April but just haven't had the time to work on them

 

[HawleyFarms]

Well my Belle batch turned to vinegar on me but hopefully in the next couple weeks I will get my dry yeast bomms going. Been a tough and busy spring and just haven't had the time to work with my beers and wines like I'd hoped.

 

[GurraG]

Sorry to hear about the vinegar. Looking forward to the dry yeast bomms!

 

[wxman73]

Have you ever seen the northern lights?

 

[alazar]

Yeah, we wanna know are the cluster flies bad?