For the past 2 years the Harpoon Brewery puts on a homebrew competion amongst its own employees. The competition takes place during our annual company outing at our Windsor, VT location in September. Â Needless to say it’s a great way to promote creativity and encourages our sales and marketing employees to get their hands and feet wet with the brewers and just brew.
Most entries come from a 10 or 20 gallon batch of beer that is brewed on our 20 gallon pilot system which floats between the Boston and Windsor breweries. Â “Brewmaggedon” as I like to call it. Â Come August, there seems to always be a group using the system and besides for the one brewer in charge, no one knows what they’re doing. It’s hilarious. Well, some do and some brewers don’t haha.
This year my group got at it early to beat the rush. Â I teamed up with a group of our “outer market” salesmen. Â We chose to brew a zesty, French-American Saison with grapefruit, orange, and honey that featured citrusy, American hops. The result? The tentatively named “Outer Rim Saison”.
We chose the saison (French for “season”) style because it’s a traditionally lighter ale brewed with Belgian yeasts that features a more fruity flavor…a perfect landscape for a refreshing summer beer. In this case we used a French Saison yeast that just wreeks of banana. Â And with a member of the group coming up from Florida we wanted to feature native Floridian fruits such as grapefruit and orange as well as a bit of local honey. We’ll let this ferment over the next week then add some honey and maybe a bit of lemon grass. Â Then we’ll condition it for about a week, rack into 5 gallon logs, then carbonate it. Â I think it should turn out pretty good! We’ll see come September…I’ll let you know
Cheers!