Beetroot in a Saison?

[Fat Bastard]

Well, it looks like Yeastie Boys ate not going to divulge their secrets anytime soon.

So, I have a basic Saison recipe (Bullshead Motueka Saison, with the Motueka subbed out for a more neutral Belma, which I have heaps of) a, smack pack of 3711 and access to beetroot.

I'm thinking of boiling the beets for 10 minutes, skin on, slipping the skins off, grating with a sanitised grater into a sanitised bowl, chopping the skins up and dumping the lot into the primary after it's almost done, leaving for 5 days, then transfer to secondary for cold crashing.

Anyone have any thoughts on this, or am I breaking the sound barrier here?

Cheers,

FB

 

[wide eyed and legless]

My wife has grown a lot of mangel wurzels and swedes and they are now ready for harvesting, just as a matter of interest I had a look for mangel wurzel beer, although I am not that adventurous as to make one, the most adventurous I have got is adding liquorice chips to oatmeal stout and grapefruit into an American pale ale.
However I did find a recipe for a mangel wurzel Saison at (www.ediblecommunities.com) might give you some ideas good luck with it.

 

[boonchu]

If your not looking for any fermentables from the beetroot, I say go for it.
Not sure how much taste you will get but it should look good.
You could hedge your bets and throw some in at the end of the boil as well

 

[chefsantos]

i had it at gaps it wasn't to bad . i made a quince saison last summer which had a great fruitiness to it .

 

[Fat Bastard]

My wife has grown a lot of mangel wurzels and swedes and they are now ready for harvesting, just as a matter of interest I had a look for mangel wurzel beer, although I am not that adventurous as to make one, the most adventurous I have got is adding liquorice chips to oatmeal stout and grapefruit into an American pale ale.
However I did find a recipe for a mangel wurzel Saison at (www.ediblecommunities.com) might give you some ideas good luck with it.

Cheers, I had a quick look and couldn't find anything though,

So, how much do you think i need to use? I'm thinking of 1.5 kg net weight of beets in a 23 litre batch. How much quince did you use chefsantos?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I found it by entering mangel wurzel beet beer into Google.

 

[chefsantos]

i used about 1kg of slow poached quince (poached in 1ltr water and 500g sugar)for a 23lt batch

 

[fletcher]

sounds crazy! and awesome. be mindful though, if you drink enough of it, your piss will be bright pink. i may or may not know this from eating a whole tin of canned beetroot when i was a kid. scared the hell out of me :lol:

 

[Fat Bastard]

Thanks WE&L. I tried to use the site's search engine and a google site search to no avail. Didn't think to do a plain old Google search!

Santos, I reckon I'll be on the money with 1.5kg then, I guess beet isn't quite as flavoursome as quince.

So I guess I'll brew up the base Saison as a plain one first to get a handle on the recipe, and harvest some undyed pink yeast, then we're away with the Root Saison!

 

[Tex083]

I don't want to force you into doing something you don't want to do but boiling the beats then peeling and grating sounds like a massive pain in the bum! Once you touch the beats it's not sanitised anymore. Then you have the grater and bowl, I would do all the peeling/ chopping before adding to water and adding it all to the fermenter. As long as your beats are clean of dirt you should be able to put it All the fermenter.
The cooking liquid would have heaps of colour in it and a bit of flavour, the chunky bits would add flavour and colour. Might even get a point of gravity out of it if the beets are converted in the cooking process.

Please please report back on how it turns out, nothing shits me more than searching up a topic that sounds amazing to have no ending. It's like when your having a root and...

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Pulling up my Bolthardy beetroot today, this is what I am going to do. Boil for 15 mins, rub off the skin when cooled, slice them, place into sterilized jars, simmer some Malt vinegar, sugar to taste and pickling spices with extra whole mustard seeds.
Pour over beetroot expelling any trapped air, cap the jars and leave for two weeks.
Not as adventurous as Fat ******* but delicious.

 

[toncils]

Someone told me beetroot is FULL of sugars. It doesn't taste like much, so I guess all the sugars are complex (right?). Does that mean you'd need to mash it?

 

[Fat Bastard]

Yeah, dunno. I guess if I grate it up and boil it for 10 minutes there might be some conversion. Been shying away from chucking it in the mash as I reckon the boil and primary ferment might carry off any flavour

 

[sinkas]

I made a beet root triple once
added carefully prepared raw beetroot juice to ferment, so as not to impart cooked vegetal flavour /aroma,

 

[Fat Bastard]

How did that turn out for you sinkas? How did you prepare the beetroot juice?

I did a refract on the water left from some boiled whole beets I did for a beetroot, rosewater and mint salad on the weekend and got 1.005 for 5 whole beets in enough water to cover them, so there's some sugars there, but how much of it is fermentable is anyone's guess.

Next brew up will be the base saison, although I'm very temped to split the smack pack prior and just do the beetroot first up.

 

[TimT]

Coming to a somewhat old thread now but.... did a beetroot beer myself a couple of months ago. Basic pale ale recipe with beetroot thrown in at the start of the boil. My stupid plan was to make a purple beer; well, the beetroot did change the colour of the beer but more to a kind of red. At the end of the boil all the beetroot flavour had vanished. If I recall correctly I used two beetroots for a 4.5 litre beer?

Read a few months ago that pumpkin needs to be mashed for pumpkin beer, otherwise the starch and sugars in pumpkin can cause bottle bombs - and beetroot seems to me to be a comparable ingredient. The recommended method for the pumpkin was to bake it on high in the oven for an hour or so until it was melting and caramelised, and then add it to the mash. Perhaps similar could be done to beetroot.

However, I haven't had any problem with exploding bottles with my current beetroot beer (and I still have a bottle left), so there you go. Next time I'd definitely like to get more beetroot flavour in though.

BTW, sugar beet is a sub-variety of beetroot that was cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries as a sweetener. I think the main sugar is sucrose - fermentable!

 

[Fat Bastard]

What a fortuitous bump for, this weekend is the weekend I'm throwing caution to the wind and brewing this one.

I brewed a base saison a couple of weeks ago to see how the un-beetrooted saison went, and it went mostly ok, except I have now decided that Belma won't work with the beet, so it's been subbed for Czech Saaz, and I'll mash it a bit higher, 1.000 was a tad low for my tastes. I'm still not certain what I will do with the beetroot, but at this stage the most likely option is to run it throught the julienne blade on my mandoline and boil it in just enough water to cover it, then add to the fermenter when cool. This will happen when primary ferment has died down and it has a couple of points to go.

Anyway, can anyone see any issues with the recipe below?

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Les Sang des Innocents Beetroot Saison
Brewer:
Asst Brewer:
Style: Saison
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 25.84 l
Post Boil Volume: 21.84 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 18.00 l
Bottling Volume: 17.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.054 SG
Estimated Color: 3.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 93.3 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
29.70 l Sydney Water (Manly Vale 25/09/13) Water 1 -
1.90 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 2 -
1.10 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 3 -
1.89 kg Vienna Malt (Weyermann) (3.0 SRM) Grain 4 48.7 %
1.26 kg Pilsner (Weyermann) (1.7 SRM) Grain 5 32.5 %
0.63 kg Wheat Malt, Malt Craft (Joe White) (1.8 Grain 6 16.2 %
0.10 kg Acidulated (Weyermann) (1.8 SRM) Grain 7 2.6 %
33.00 g Saaz [3.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 16.5 IBUs
1.80 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Boil 60.0 mins Water Agent 9 -
1.00 g Calcium Chloride (Boil 60.0 mins) Water Agent 10 -
33.00 g Saaz [3.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 11 4.4 IBUs
7.61 g Brewbrite (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 12 -
4.00 g Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 mins) Other 13 -
33.00 g Saaz [3.20 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 15.0 mi Hop 14 3.3 IBUs
0.9 pkg French Saison (Wyeast Labs #3711) [50.28 Yeast 15 -
1.50 kg Beetroot (Secondary 4.0 days) Other 16 -


Mash Schedule: Piers' Mash Schedule 1
Total Grain Weight: 3.88 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Protein Rest Add 16.39 l of water at 55.6 C 52.0 C 10 min
Mash Step Heat to 62.0 C over 10 min 62.0 C 15 min
Mash Step Heat to 66.0 C over 2 min 66.0 C 45 min
GP Rest Heat to 72.0 C over 8 min 72.0 C 10 min
Mash Out Heat to 78.0 C over 6 min 78.0 C 10 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 14.71 l water at 78.0 C
Notes:
------
Beetroot added to fermenter after primary has died down. Chop finely and boil for 10 minutes with enough water to cover.

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,

FB

 

[surly]

watching with interest. I would love to see what the finished product looks like.
Good luck FB

 

[nu_brew]

Love a saison. I think the Beetroot will go amazingly if you can get some earthy flavours.

 

[sinkas]

cam out quite well,
I preped the bett jiouce,
byshredding and squeexing the shredded material,
I used about 2 kilo I think, ,
it was actually a bit too dark for about 18 L of all pils and candysyrup triple