Rye Brett Saison

Saison is one of my favorite styles to brew and drink.  The fact that it is such an open ended style really gives the brewer a lot of room for expression.  For this beer I really wanted to focus on the earthy, spicy, and rustic qualities that are often found in a saison, and have the citrus and fruit flavors in the background.  In order to do this I used a healthy amount of Rye malt, Saaz hops, and finished the beer with Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. Since the Brett will give the beer a nice barnyard/horse blanket flavor, the saccharomyces strain was not overly important, and having just brewed the Motueka Saison with Wyeast 3711, I wanted to recycle that yeast cake and use it for this beer too.  Since 3711 is such a workhorse I wanted to mash this beer high, in order to guarantee the Brett has enough sugars to chomp on during the long secondary fermentation.

Rye Brett Saison
Brewed 5 April 2013
Batch Size: 5 gallons
OG: 1.058

FG: 1.002 (anticipated)
SRM: 4.7
IBU: 30

Grain
7.5 lbs. Rahr 2-Row
2 lbs. Rye Malt
1 lb. White Wheat Malt

Hops
0.52 oz. Warrior (Pellet, 13.7% AA) @ 75 min
2.00 oz. Saaz (Pellet, 2.9% AA) @ 10 min

Yeast
Wyeast 3711 - 1 cup of slurry from Motueka Saison
WLP650 Brettanomyces Bruxellanus added to secondary

Misc.
1 tablet of Whilfloc @ 15 min
1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min

Mash
Sacch. rest 151F for 60 min

Water
Carbon filtered DC tap water

Notes
Brewed 5 April 2013, by myself
Missed mash temperature by 4 degrees, decided it would still be okay, just less sugars for the Brett
Used rice hulls due to Rye Malt and Wheat, ran off great.
Collected 6 gallons of 1.048 runnings (70% eff)
Extended boil by 15 minutes to concentrate the wort. Cooled to 69F, pitched yeast. Solid fermentation after 8 hours.

4/17/2013 - Racked to secondary, down to 1.004, pitched a vial of WLP650

6/5/2013 - Not as much Brett character as expected (still young), so I pitched 1L of 1.035 starter wort to provide some more sugars for the Brett.