Trappist & Saison

With all the beers I have brewing now- Bourbon Cask Ale, Bigfoot BarelyWine, Belgian Wit, and Belgian Dubbel – I decide to start a couple more.  Can’t have too much beer, right!  🙂

First one I started was a “Lawnmower de Saison”.  I’m pretty excited about this farmhouse ale, for which i have a particular fondness.  Having very little free time, extract brewing has its advantages.  I picked up this kit from Midwest Brewing Supplies (http://midwestsupplies.com/).  I was fairly supprised by small amount of grain there was in this kit, 1/2# of Cara-20 and 1/2# of unmalted wheat, I’m used to seeing a couple pounds of grain in the extract recipies I’ve done over the last decade.   After adding all the hops, corriander, orange peel, and LME, my kitchen was alive with that wonderful smell of homebrewing further exciting me about this Saison.

As I was brewing the Saison, I started on a Trappist ale.  Some how i’ve ended up in a belgian ale bender – Dubbel, Wit, Saison, and now a Trappist.  Oh well, shouldn’t really complain about good beer, huh.   Like the Saison I was taken aback by the small amount of grains in this extract recipe, 1/2# caramel 40 and 1/2# carapils.  With this recipe it included 1# of Candi Sugar, supposed to be added 50 minutes into the boil.  But, because the Saison added it with the malt, i made the assumption without really reading the instruction that it would be the same for the trappist… I’m concered that I’ve messed up this batch.  Only time will tell, but that is the nice thing about beer you can mess up in so many places and end up with a nice suprise.