Ginger Carrot Kettle Sour Saison
Recipe Courtesy: Dustin Haug

This recipe comes to us by way of Saint Paul homebrewer Dustin Haug, inspired by a kombucha he had that was flavored with ginger, carrot, and turmeric. The beer packs wonderful ginger heat with a layer of earthiness from the carrot and turmeric, and some fun funky fruit and pepper from the French saison yeast. The tartness of Dustin’s example was quite refreshing and nowhere near a vinegar-level of acid, much more like what you’d expect from a kettle sour beer.

See our tasting notes on the beer and some of Dustin’s thoughts on possible changes to the recipe in this Chop & Brew video.

For more tips and information on the kettle souring process, check out this video Chip produced for the day job at Northern Brewer.

Ginger Carrot Kettle Sour Saison

OG: 1.044

FG: 1.003

ABV: 5.4%

INGREDIENTS

Malt

• 10 lbs Pils Malt
• 2 lbs White Wheat Malt

Hops

• 1.5 oz Chinook (whole-leaf homegrown hops)

Yeast

• Omega Lacto Blend (for kettle souring)
• Wyeast 3711 French Saison (for main fermentation)

Other Ingredients

• 32 oz Carrot Juice (such as Knudson’s Organic Carrot Juice)
• 16 oz Crystallized Ginger, finely chopped (Look for something like this.)
• 2 tablespoons teaspoon turmeric

PROCESS

Mashing & Kettle Souring

Mash grains at 149F for 60 minutes. Run off and collect ~ 6 gallons of wort.

Bring wort to a boil for 10 minutes to sterilize. Put a sanitized wort chiller into the wort, then kill the flame.

Chill wort to ~ 95-100F.

Pitch Omega Lacto Blend into warm wort for kettle souring. Cover the kettle tightly. (Optional: add a blanket of CO2 to help protect the wort during souring. Dustin didn’t do this and it didn’t seem to have any negative effect.) Depending on the temperature the wort rests at during this process, it could take between one and three days to reach the level of sourness you prefer.Dustin pitched the Lacto Blend at 95F and allowed the wort to freefall in temperature while insulating the kettle to retain as much heat as possible. As always, go by taste and make the call when you think it’s tart enough. Remember though that the tartness will seemingly increase as the sugars are fermented out after the upcoming brew day, so less is more to a degree. If you have the equipment, test pH level daily; you’re aiming for 3.2-3.7. Mine was about 3.5 at this point. Once the level of tartness is achieved, it’s time for the brew day. 

Brew Day

Bring wort to boil. Add Chinook hops and boil for 45 minutes.

Chill wort to 68F degrees and pitch Wyeast 3711 French Saison. Ferment at free-rising temperature up to about 74F.

Once final gravity is reached, time to add the carrot juice, crystallized ginger, and turmeric. The carrot juice was pasteurized, so I just put that into secondary. I added the ginger and turmeric to a pot with 6 oz of water, heated to a boil, then covered and cooled before adding to the secondary fermenter.  Probably not totally necessary, but I like to minimize things going totally sideways when adding funky things post boil. This will likely cause reinvigorated fermentation due to natural sugar in the carrot juice and crystallized ginger. 

Once fermentation is complete, prime and bottle, or keg and carbonate.