Brew Day with Dad

It comes around for me about once every other month - brew day!  Today's brew: the Petite Saison d'Ete from Northern Brewer.

I've never brewed a saison - I've never even tried a saison - but rumor has it it's a great summer beer. Northern Brewer says:

This session-strength Saison of summer pours tawny-gold and perfumes the air with tangy yeast and pungent hop aromas. The flavor is lightly earthy with spicy, flowery hops and a grain-and-bread malt character; caramel malt dukes it out with Saaz and Styrian Goldings through the middle before a palate-cleansingly dry finish.

In about six weeks, we'll see how that pans out.

Today was a special brew day, because my 9-year-old daughter helped.  She gets as excited about brew days as I do.  She probably picks up on the positive energy from me and wants to share the excitement.  But wherever she gets that energy, we did everything today together.  We cleaned and sanitized the equipment together, weighed out the hops together, she stirred while I added the malt extract, and together we tasted the wort - the liquid before the yeast is added and truly becomes beer.  She loved the sweetness of the wort after we added the malt, but she wasn't crazy about the bitterness after we started adding the hops.  To be honest, neither was I (it'll mellow and develop over time), but it sure is fun tasting the brew at each stage of the process.

She did leave me to clean up all the equipment afterward by myself.  Smart kid.

It'll be a hard wait, but after three weeks in the fermenting bucket and three weeks conditioning in the bottle, I'll get to taste my first saison.  And maybe I'll have to name it to commemorate today's daddy-daughter brewing session.