“Polar Vortex" Saison [secondary]

Racking date: Dec. 8, 2013

The full batch sat for two weeks in my furnace room alternating between high temps of 73 'F (when I was heating it with my carboy wrap) and lows of 63 'F at night. After initially sitting the first night at 64 'F, I heated the batch to 78 'F before letting it cool back down. That really kicked off fermentation. After that, I tried to get the temps up to the low 70's every evening.

I split the 6 gallon batch between two 3-gallon carboys. The first will simply continue to sit, clarify, and age. The second was racked on top of black caps from my parents property. I will let both sit for about a month before bottling.

Observations:

OG: 1.009. MUCH better attenuation than expected. WOW.

Appearance: Dark brown color with an almost a watery chocolate milk opaqueness. It sounds worse than it looks, but doesn't have much clarity.

Aroma: Belgian fruitiness, faint chocolate or toffee.

Taste: Tons of complexity. Very slight sour taste at first, flavors of prune or plums. This quickly gives way to sweet toffee. Almost a faint bready aftertaste. Nice. Definitely has that Belgian character I was hoping for.

Ingredients:

• 28 oz frozen wild black caps

Schedule:

• Very slowly heated frozen black caps in sauce pan with a little water to ~160 'F. Chilled and then added to carboy. Racked 3 gallons of beer on top.