Sah'ti

My last sah'tea turned out pretty well; my wife liked it a lot, I thought it lacked a bit of juniper-ness.  With this brew, I added a bit of crystal rye, and went back to adding the crushed juniper berries to the second half of the boil.

Brew Day: 7 Apr 2018

Partial Mash:
8 oz Munich
5 oz rye
4 oz English crystal rye
2 oz flaked wheat

Boil (20 min):
1 lb Bavarian Wheat DME
4 oz table sugar
14 g Styrian Goldings Hops (@ 20 min)
14 g crushed juniper berries (@ 10 min)

Yeast: K97

I followed all of my usual processes.

Addendum, 19 Apr: Racked to secondary.

Addendum, 7 May: Bottled today; got 9 good bottles.

Addendum, 20 May: Opened one bottle tonight after chilling.  Carbonation was very light, not mature enough at this point.  Even so, Terri liked the flavor.  The beer pours with a medium brown color, with some light bubbles around the edge of the glass.  I didn't try enough of it to really get a sense of the flavor, going to let this one rest for at least another week. 

Sah'tea

It's been a while since I made a sah'tea, and I was feeling a bit like I wanted to make another one, and this is a good beer to make for the first beer of 2018.  I also wanted to take something of a different approach to the juniper and tea additions, boiling them separately to produce a tea, and then adding that tea to the beer just prior to bottling.  This is something I tried with the most recent ginger saison I made.  My hope is that by not adding the juniper and tea during the boil, that a good bit of the flavors won't be reduced by the yeast during fermentation.

Brew Day: 1 Jan 2018

Partial Mash:
8 oz Munich
6 oz rye
2 oz Carapils
4 oz Victory
2 oz CaraMunich
*I'm sure folks are going to have questions about the specific choices I made regarding the malts, but as with several other of the beers I've made, it was more about what I had on-hand.  The same is true with the hops additions (below).

Boil (20 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
4 oz table sugar

Hops:
4 g Styrian Golding hops (5.7% AA, @ 20 min)
4 g German Perle hops (8.2 % AA, @ 20 min)

Yeast: K97

Addendum, 2 Jan: After what happened with my last beer, and given the fact that I had to put some of my brewing stuff back on the shelves, I checked on the beer.  The yeast seems quite happy, and there were no spontaneous, explosive events this time.  I'll let the fermentation run for about 10 days or so, then rack this into secondary for a bit.

Addendum, 11 Jan: Racked the beer to secondary.

Addendum, 18 Jan: Bottling - Bring 1 cup of water to a boil, with 14 g of crushed juniper berries and two black tea bags.  Boil gently, let steep for a few min, then pass through a strainer to remove the chunks of crushed berries to get 1/2 c. of hot 'tea'. Dissolve 2 1/2 T (1 oz) of table sugar in the tea.  This is the priming solution.  Got six good regular bottles, one flip-top, and 1 1/2 soda bottles; I'll be trying the soda bottles (in particular the partial fill) in two weeks.

Addendum, 7 Feb: Tried one of the soda bottles last night; didn't get much of juniper at all, mostly came out as a dark wheat beer.  So far what I'm finding in this process is that additives such as ginger and juniper berries are just as good, if not better, added to the boil, rather than during bottling.  That is, at least using the procedures I've outlined in my attempts.  It's still good beer, just not what I was looking for, specifically.

Sah'Tea #2

Okay, my first attempt at a sah'tea may have gone a little awry (given that there's rye malt in the wort, no pun intended...well, maybe just a little...), but only because I'd use a hefeweizen yeast that, on my first use, has so far produced a LOT of banana aroma in the hefe.  It's likely not going to end up being anywhere close to what I had hoped, and may end up getting renamed to "LCpl's Tears #2", or something similar.

This time, I'm going to go with a wort that's a bit lighter in color, but with good body.

Brew Day: 22 May

Partial Mash:
12 oz Belgian Munich malt
5 oz rye malt
1.5 oz CaraPils

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME (@ 60 min)
2.5 oz table sugar (@ 60 min)
10 g Huell Melon hops (AA: 4.5%) (@ 60 min)

10 g crushed juniper berries and 3 black tea bags (@ 10 min)

Yeast: Safale K-97

*I followed my normal process for the partial mash, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 27 May: While I was preparing to bottle the "300 Hefe" this morning, I went ahead and put an air lock in this fermenter.  Things seem to be moving along nicely.

Addendum, 7 Jun: Bottled tonight; got 8 regular bottles and one re-purposed soda bottle.  Should do nicely.

Addendum, 3 Jul: Tasted the beer tonight, from what I'd put into a soda bottle.  I just about hit the nail on the head with this one!  Very, very close on color, body, and flavor...even have just a bit of bitterness/"mouth feel" from the tea.  Very good, definitely sticking with this recipe, with the minor exception of upping the juniper addition to 12 grams.

Sah'Tea

I wanted to try something a bit different, and figured I'd go back to something I'd considered last year.  I still haven't been able to find DogFish Head Sah'tea in the stores, so I thought I'd take a shot at making one of my own.

From the Sah'tea page at the DogFish Head web site:

...the beer is fermented with a German weizen yeast. In addition to juniper berries foraged from the Finnish countryside, Sah'tea is flavored with black tea.

I've got a copy of Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing, and there's a recipe on pg. 244 for a Finnish Sahti.  I'm using something of a variant of that recipe, going with a partial mash, but I wanted to get an idea of how to go about adding juniper berries to the recipe, and in what amount.  I've been doing research on the subject and what I've found is that there are some resources available on the Internet that both praise and condemn the use of juniper berries in beer, but few that include recipes or proportions.  The recipe in the book calls for 1 oz of crushed berries in a 5 gal batch, and juniper branches are included in the mash.  I'm not going to include the branches in this attempt, but I may in future attempts.  I have a juniper bush in my front yard and snipping off a few small branches to include in the boil might not be a bad addition.

For this first attempt, I'm going to got with crushed berries, added to the last 10 min of the boil, in a muslin bag.  I'll do a gentle crushing using a mortar and pestle, and I don't want little bits and pieces of the berries floating around in my beer; the muslin bag will take care of that.

Ingredients

Brew Day: 6 May 2016

Partial Mash:
9 oz Briess Rye Malt
3 oz Crystal Rye Malt
1.5 oz Carapils

Boil (60 min):
1.6 lb Munich LME (@ 60 min)
3 oz table sugar (@ 60 min)

Hops: 10 g German Perle, AA: 8.4% (FWH)

Additions: 10 g Juniper berries (crushed), black tea (@ 10 min, remained in the wort during cooling)

Yeast:  WLP380 (wanted to go with something that imparts less banana, more clove)

*I followed my usual process for the partial mash, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 7 May: Going through my normal morning routine, I checked in on the beer; the yeast was pitched about 13 hrs ago.  It's bubbling quite nicely; there's a bit of blow-off in the blow-off bottle, but not a lot, and the bubbles rising in the fermenter are as many as the stars in the sky.  ;-)

I will say that the beer is a bit more brown than I would have like, but that's a result of the LME and crystal rye.  We'll see how the combination of additions works on the flavor, but the next attempt at this may be more along the lines of an all-grain brew.

Addendum, 8 May: Checked in on the beer this morning, found that the blow-off bottle was completely overflowing, and was glad that I'd put paper towels underneath it.  I replaced the blow-off bottle with a new one (I use spent Gatorade bottles), and was able to see the flow of bubbles; they were small, a little over  second apart, but there was a steady flow.  Now, I'll just let the beer sit and let the yeast keep doing it's thing.  I'll likely put an airlock on the fermenter in about a week, and I'm looking at bottling either the 18th or maybe the 20th.

Addendum, 12 May: My wife had one of the hefeweizens I made with the WLP380 yeast, and she really likes it...a lot!  She opened it and poured it into a glass, and I could smell the banana from across the room.  As such, I'm wondering if the juniper berries and tea will overwhelm the banana esters, or after a couple of weeks of sitting, the reverse will be true.

What I may need to do with the next attempt at this brew is try the K-97 yeast.  I know that the description from the DFH site says "weizen" yeast, which is "wheat" in German.  The K-97 is described to be a German ale yeast, so that may be the way to go.

Right now, I'm somewhat on the fence regarding other changes.  Part of me says, "...make documented, atomic changes...", but the Marine in me says, "...make BOLD dope changes!!" It might be best if, when tasting this brew, the banana is overpowering to just change the yeast used, and nothing else.

Addendum, 21 May: Bottled today, before heading out to an anniversary dinner with my lovely bride!  Got a full six-pack, plus two repurposed soda bottles worth of beer.  During the transfer, the beer had a bit of banana aroma already; I didn't try it because I wanted it all in the bottles.  It will be interesting to try this one in 2-3 weeks.