Saison/Lavender and Hibiscus Saison Brew Day

Getting back to brewing and what better way than a saison in the summer?  I decided to put together a basic saison recipe, but thought it would be a waste of a good opportunity to not do anything else.  After looking at Revolution's Rosa, I decided that hibiscus/flowers in general would be something I would like to experiment.  Next, I stopped by The Mad Fermentationist's website and saw he had instructions on how to make a tea out of flower petals and how to add them to your beer.  At his recommendation, I purchased the flower petals here.  I initially wanted to add jasmine and hibiscus as I enjoy the taste of jasmine in tea, but unfortunately they were all out of the jasmine.  As a result, I decided to opt for lavender instead as other sellers did not seem as reliable.  So here we go.

Saison/Lavender and Hibiscus Saison

Batch size: 5.0 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.003
Boil Time: 90 minutes
Mash Time: 90 minutes

11 lbs Pilsener
0.75 lb White Wheat
0.75 lb Munich

1.8 oz Hallertau @ 60 minutes
0.75 oz Hallertau @ 0 minutes

0.75 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 minutes
1.0 tsp irish moss @ 15 minutes

Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison

Water Profile: Chicago

Mashed in with 3 gallons of water.  Came up short on my mash temperature, so I boiled some water until I reached 147 degrees F.  Let the mash sit for 90 minutes in order to ensure full conversion.  Batch sparged with 4 at 168 degrees F and collected a total of around 6.5 gallons.

Brewed: 6/29/13

Chilled to 72 degrees F and pitched starter I made two nights before.

Moved to secondary: 7/15/13

Bottled: 4/24/13

During the bottling process, I made a tea out of lavender and hibiscus to add to part of the beer.  I used around 0.75 oz of lavender and 2.2 oz of hibiscus.  To that I added 4 cups of water and mixed together in my french press.  The initial tea was.... incredibly strong and tart.  Initially I was a little worried I had gone overboard, but I decided to add the tea as planned and hope for the best once it was diluted a bit.  After adding 2.5 cups to around 2.75 gallons of saison, the resulting concoction eased my mind a little.  As I suspected I believe the jasmine would have complimented the beer more than the lavender and even at 0.75 oz, I think the lavender could have been scaled back.  Nevertheless, looking forward to trying this one.

Tasting: