Saison yeast in Rauchbier

[DonMoleon]

Since it is a Rauchbier, the smoked malt is a substantial portion on the ingredients. Will I need to substitute it with something else, or just leave most of it out?

[spiderwrangler]

would you be able to post the recipe here for people to look at?

[DonMoleon]

Certainly, I'll do it this evening when I get home...

[Afterlab]

I'm with Spider on this one. There are a lot of great beer styles you can fuse together but I am having a tough time imagining a successful fusion of smoke malt phenolics and spicy, tart, potentially bubblegum saison yeast esters. Even for an experienced brewer. Before you brew this, pick up a commercial example of a Saison and a Rauchbier/Smoked beer if you have access to them. Blend them together and see what you think. If you enjoy it then proceed as planned, if not then don't brew this.

If Brian Hunt from Moonlight Brewing were here he would say brew to whatever makes sense for your region/climate. Since it is consistently warmer where you live, it makes sense to use strains that allow you some leniency with your fermentation temps. It is great that you are looking at a Saison yeast but unfortunately it is one of the more unpredictable yeasts strains that brewers either love or hate Until you have some way to control your temps you are pretty much at the mercy of yeast strains that will throw off a lot of esters. With that being said you will likely want brew beers with a more restrained flavor profile characteristics since your yeasts are going to add a lot of flavor to your beers.

[BDawg]

You need to build a fermentation chamber:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/ch ... hiller.PDF

Far cheaper than running your a/c full blast.

[DonMoleon]

You need to build a fermentation chamber:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/ch ... hiller.PDF

Far cheaper than running your a/c full blast.

I've considered this, but beyond making beer I'm not much of a DIY kind of guy, mostly because of time constraints (2 businesses and a baby on the way). I may consider hiring someone to build it for me though.

I actually stumbled upon this version last night when searching for brewing supply stores fairly close to me (Singapore seems to be the closest, even though it's a 3 hour flight).

http://www.ibrew.com.sg/Chiller.asp

It's about US$200 pre-assembled, or about US$140 if you put it together yourself. Does this seem like a good investment?

I think I'd still prefer buying a temperature controller for my old fridge and using that when I buy my new, larger fridge for the kitchen (in a few months). I found a controller at another shop online (also from Singapore):

http://www.homebrew.com.sg/homebrew-sto ... t=4671092v

I was wondering though, will this gadget control both the fridge AND the freezer compartments, or just one? Ideally I would like to use the fridge as a fermentation chamber and use the (former) freezer to store beer at a slightly cooler temperature.

[alanzo]

At first I was like "sounds like a terrible idea". But then I was all like "oh wait, Jamil has played around with this at Heretic". And, of course, everything he does is a good idea. Might be worth sending him an email to see how it went and if you can maybe get a recipe out of him. I don't believe it was a saison yeast into a rauchbier, specificially. But he was combining smoked malt and a belgian yeast strain.

http://www.mrmalty.com/contact-us.php

http://hereticbrewing.com/contact-us

[spiderwrangler]

Does this seem like a good investment?


I was wondering though, will this gadget control both the fridge AND the freezer compartments, or just one? Ideally I would like to use the fridge as a fermentation chamber and use the (former) freezer to store beer at a slightly cooler temperature.

The peltier device coolers are pretty cool, they pull heat from one side to the other just by passing current through it... no moving parts. Most will have a fan to circulate the air past the device, but with it positioned on the top of the chamber, it may just rely on convection to bring warm air up into contact with the plate. I've used them in a different application, not certain from the link whether it is temperature controlled or if it runs constantly... that would be something I'd want to look into.

For the temp control on your fridge, the fridge and freezer are controlled separately, and since you'll only have one probe coming off your controller, would only be able to use it on one.