A few years back now, Lisa and I built a mash tun and broke it in with a saison. The recipe was simple and it turned out fantastic. I attribute most of its success to WLP585 Saison III. A white labs platinum strain that pumps out consistently great beer. We had a sample in our yeast bank that I had planned to use for a saison to take on our camping trip next month, but my plans were trampled when I found the bottle of it had exploded in our fridge. Not sure how or why, but it was completely lost.

While stocking up on supplies I was pleasantly surprised to see white labs purepitch packets in the wild. For the uninitiated, these packets are made from the larger container that the yeast was grown in so that it never is transferred and reduces the risk of contamination.

Since I cannot repeat our original saison recipe at this time, I decided to go with something new. From the original recipe I took the malt bill, simple 10 and 2 of pilsner and 2-row. For the start of the season I wanted something to stand out but still be drinkable, apollo hops to balance out the very pale malt backbone and east kent goldings with a bit more apollo at the end for flavor and aroma. Saison II (WLP566) should give it a neutral yeast character but we'll see if its as "clean" as saison III used to be for us.

I look away for two seconds and my first half of the mash boiled over. Not as bad as when a full kettle of wort boils over. This was a good way and slightly messy way to start off saison season. I will bide my time until wlp585 comes back on the market with this batch and another batch with the wlp565 soon enough.