Long Overdue Update

It's been a little while since I've posted, and there are several reasons for that.  One, I haven't brewed anything in a while.  Mostly, that's due to the fact that my beer fridge has been overflowing lately, it seems.  I need people to come drink my beer so I have room to put more beer in the fridge!  The second reason I haven't posted in a while is that I was at Fort Polk, LA for most of June for a JRTC rotation.  Luckily, I wasn't part of the RTU, but was on the "bad" side with the OPFOR.  It was hot and humid and miserable, but also pretty fun.

Anyway, we cleaned up the garage over the weekend, and did some reorganizing out there using some shelves we bought at Sam's.  As a result, we now have more space than we did before.  That got me again thinking about getting a chest freezer to serve as a fermentation chamber.  In turn, that got me thinking about brewing again.  With the hottest part of the summer ahead, I looked into yeasts that don't mind fermenting at higher temperatures.  I found what I was looking for in WLP565, which is a Belgian Saison yeast strain based on the famed Dupont strain.

Basically, it will be happy between 80-90 degrees, which will be perfect in my upstairs fermentation area.  I love saisons, and thought I'd give this one a little fall twist, since it probably won't be ready until late September.  So, I'm going to do a Pumpkin Spice Saison.  Below is the recipe I've worked out:

4.5 lbs 2-row
4.5 lbs Pilsner
2 lbs Munich
.5 lbs CaraMunich
.5 lbs German Rye

I'll mash the grains for 60 minutes at 149-150* then boil for 60 minutes with the following hop additions:

1oz Spalt at 60/15/5 minutes each

And the following spices at 5 minutes:

1Tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1tsp nutmeg
1tsp cinnamon

I plan on pitching at 70* and letting it rise while in a swamp cooler with no ice for a week.  It should be up in the 80s at that point, and I'll take it out of the water bath and just let it go for another 3 weeks.  Hopefully, it gets up to 90*.  People claim to get around 85-90% attenuation from this strain, with FGs under 1.010.  My estimated OG is 1.058, so if I get down to around 1.006, that will be an ABV of 6.8%.

Hopefully I can get to the homebrew store this week and brew this up on Saturday.  Then, I can bottle in about a month, right before AT, then have it ready to drink around the end of September, just in time for fall!