Brewday - Return of the Harvester

It's been some time since I've gone back to an old recipe. I've been experimenting with new styles and techniques a fair bit lately so it's been awhile since I tried to reproduce an old beer. But as I'm preparing to brew a few different saisons soon, including a high gravity version, and my first 10 gallon batch of my saison du Sam, I would need an ample amount of yeast. One way to do this would be to make a starter, but a much more interesting way would be to brew a lower alcohol drinking saison and collect the yeast for the subsequent batches. And thus the way was paved for the return of the Harvester.

The Harvester is a golden beer that is very dry, highly carbonated, and refreshing, but with enough fruity/spicy character to keep the drinker interested. It would also present a great opportunity to use my newly upgraded fermentation chamber that is now wired into an electric blanket for heating, as well for cooling from the freezer. One of the tricks for ensuring a saison finishes dry is ramping up the temperature towards the end of fermentation. Now that I can easily keep temperatures down early in the beer's life and increase it later on it seemed the natural time to brew a saison. Okay, maybe brewing saison in winter is not exactly natural, but to hell with it.