And when I say magpies in the context of homebrew, I mean saisons.
So here’s what’s happening on the homebrew side of things:
No pictures of beers today. Just birds. Here, a European Magpie, said to be the smartest of birds.
Last weekend I racked the European Magpie Saison (straightforward yellow saison fermented with the Wyeast Belgian Saison yeast, supposedly extracted from the Saison Dupont yeast). The Belgian saison yeast is known for being temperamental and taking many, many weeks to attenuate fully if the conditions aren’t
just right, but it must have been happy with the ridiculous temperatures we’ve had here in NYC for the past few weeks and it turned a whole bunch of sugar into a whole bunch of alcohol without any issues. Despite having a higher finishing gravity than the other summer saisons, it tasted much drier. Curious. Will be bottling this about two weeks from now.
A Green Magpie, looking all curious.
Today I braved the heat to stand in front of a boiling pot of wort to make the fifth saison of the summer. This one is dubbed the Green Magpie Saison, and it’s a hoppy saison. Largely the same recipe as the Yellow-Billed and European Magpie saisons, though I cut down the wheat a little bit in favor of some rye malt in the hopes of getting some spiciness from the rye to go with the floral, spicy Cluster hops. Never used Cluster hops before, but that’s what they had in the whole-leaf stock at Brooklyn Homebrew and the description sounded interesting. Apparently they are one of the oldest (if not the oldest) hop variety grown in the USA. Going to dry hop this with Cluster and Delta.
A Black-Billed Magpie, which looks remarkably similar to the European Magpie. And the Korean Magpie.
Friday night we sampled the first bottle of the Black-Billed Magpie Saison, which is a black saison. In other words, it’s a black beer fermented with the same saison yeast that was used in almost all the other summer saisons. I deliberately used debittered dark malts, which have the husks removed in order to reduce the roast flavor while still providing the dark color. I also got a fair bit of color by using an extra dark candi syrup, which lent some dark fruit flavors as well. My problem with a number of “black” variations on beer styles (e.g. “Black IPA” and “Black Saison”) is that I don’t think the roast flavors of typical dark malts team well with either American hops or Belgian yeasts.
Anyway, the Black-billed Magpie was delicious. No harsh roast malt notes, just lots of lovely dark fruit and maybe some caramel flavors happening. Haven’t tried the dry-hopped version yet, and the sour version won’t make it into bottles until October.
Cheers!
