Subject: Digest for the period 3/17/2005 - 3/18/2005
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:03:40 -0500

Table of contents
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  1. Saison FG/AA 


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From: Gordon Strong  Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:42:50 -0500
Subject: Saison FG/AA 


In the March 16th digest, Mike Dixon asked about FG/AA of saison as 
published in the 2004 guidelines.

The guidelines were written before the Farmhouse Ales book was published, so 
I'm not surprised that there are some difference in the descriptions.  Data 
for FG and AA are notoriously hard to come by; many examples/breweries don't 
publish this data.  Since it is something brewers only indirectly control, 
you'd also expect more variation.  Plus insert the usual disclaimer that 
Belgians don't care about style guidelines (which I'm sure someone wants to 
say, even if the guidelines are meant to *describe* what brewers do/did, not 
*proscribe* what they do).

Without knowing whether the data in the Farmhouse Ales book is derived from 
talking with commercial brewers, whether it was analytically determined, or 
whether it's just a guess, I'm not sure we'd make a lot of changes.  Phil 
talked at the Spirit of Belgium and I think he'll be at the AHA conference 
in June; I can ask him then.

If anyone has directly measured FG of beers, I'd be interested in that data. 
Garrett Oliver has long talked about tripels being lower FG than many people 
think, and said he had hydrometer data to prove it.  But he didn't actually 
share it...  I guess to get meaningful data, you'd have to take several 
samples of a single beer, make sure it's degassed (flat), and make sure it's 
at the right temperature for the hydrometer (or adjust).  But that doesn't 
really help if you're talking about bottle-conditioned beers that may 
continue to attenuate in the bottle.  I wouldn't be surprised if Saison 
changed in FG/AA over time.

Bottom line is that we're certainly open to making changes to the 
guidelines, particularly if errors are detected.  However, I just want to 
make sure we don't substitute one estimate for another.  If we can get data 
with a higher confidence, that would be ideal.  Barring any contrary 
information, we do try to stay close to the reference texts for various 
styles (to the extent they agree).

We'll put it on the list of things to try to verify in the next revision.

Thanks,

Gordon



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