Brewed: Mais Epice

By scot in Beer Recipes, Home Brewing on Friday, August 2nd, 2013

White labs 566 yeast starter warming for pitching.

On our family trip this year I scored a bottle of Saison De Pipaix a great saison from Brasserie à Vapeur. I had been mesmerized by this beer from the first time I read an article in BYO on the brewery using steam power and only brewing occasionally. It seemed interesting. The recipe was in the magazine article but I always wanted to try the beer before I brewed. Five gallons of a spiced beer that I may not like wasn’t tickling my fancy.

Now that I had had the beer, it was time to brew it up; at least my version. There isn’t much difference from the BYO article. The main difference is a change in the grain bill, affecting gravity, and not doing a step mash. I also omitted the ginger, not a fan, but I don’t think that is going to be a huge difference with all the spices that are added to the beer.

Not a hard brew day but definitely a longer one with the 30 minutes added to both mash and boil times. The temperature also added to my chill time as it took close to 40 minutes to get down to 70*F. I always capture my water that I use for chilling and place it on the various trees around the yard. The River Birch loves those five gallon drinks. Enjoy!

General Information:
Brew Date: Saturday, August 03, 2013
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WLP566
Yeast Starter: 1.5 liter
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.50
Original Gravity: 1.053
IBU: 30.9
Color: 4.2 SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Mash Time (Minutes): 90
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Alcohol by Volume: 5.5%
Fermentation: 28 days @68*F, with a ramp up to 80*F

Grain Bill:
8.00# Pilsner
1.00# Munich
1.00# Red Wheat
0.50# Flaked Corn

Mash:
Saccharification @149.1*F

Hop Bill:
2.00 ounces Saaz First Wort Hop
1.00 ounces Fuggles @60 minutes

Extras:
1.0 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 minutes
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 minutes
??? black pepper @ 15 minutes (crushed fresh pepper to cover bottom of small bowl)
0.25 ounces whole anise
0.25 ounces bitter orange peel
0.25 ounces sweet orange peel

Updates:

• 2013-09-08: bottled with 3.8 ounces of priming sugar, 2 cups of water. Yielded 24, 22 ounce. Gravity at 1.007

Useless Fact: The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the “General Purpose” vehicle, G.P.