Summer Haze V2

About This Beer

Summer Haze V2 is the second iteration of Owen’s summer ale — a Kölsch-style summer beer built on a Belgian saison fermentation with a deliberately heavy citrus-and-spice botanical bill. Batch 17 in his notebook, brewed late October 2021. Three brews before his transition to original recipe design.

Grain Bill

5.05 kg of fermentables, all Gladfield except the honey:

• 2.3 kg Pilsner Malt (base)
• 1.6 kg Wheat Malt (body, haze, head retention)
• 0.5 kg Vienna Malt (slight malty backbone)
• 0.27 kg Light Crystal Malt (subtle sweetness, light caramel)
• 0.38 kg honey (floral character, fully fermentable — pushes ABV up and FG down)

The Pilsner + Wheat + Vienna + Light Crystal structure is the constant across the Summer Haze series. What changes between versions is the yeast, the hop schedule, and the adjunct bill.

The honey variety is the unknown — likely NZ manuka or clover from pantry stock, but the specific cultivar isn’t recorded. Both will give floral character with manuka contributing a darker, herbaceous note.

Hop Schedule

Only 28 g total — appropriate for the saison / Kölsch target IBU:

• 8 g Motueka at 60 min
• 8 g Pacific Jade at 60 min
• 4 g Pacific Jade in a 90 °C whirlpool for 15 min
• 8 g Motueka dry hop on day 5 from pitch

Motueka and Pacific Jade together carry a NZ-typical citrus and tropical character without overwhelming the botanical contribution. Calculated IBU 20.1.

The Botanical Bill

The defining feature of V2 — five botanicals plus honey, all added at 15 minutes to flameout:

• 30 g orange zest
• 2 tsp coriander seed
• 12 g grapefruit peel
• 7 g mandarin peel
• 38 g fresh ginger root
• 0.38 kg honey

Three citrus varietals layered together — orange (round, familiar), grapefruit (sharp, pith-bitter), mandarin (soft, candied) — plus coriander seed (the Witbier signature pairing for orange), and 38 g of fresh ginger root for spicy warmth.

This is a deliberately maximalist approach. The next iteration (V3) cuts back to just ginger and honey, suggesting Owen wanted to isolate which adjuncts were actually carrying the character.

Fermentation

1 packet of LalBrew Belle Saison pitched. The plan: 18 °C for 12 days, then 10 °C for 2 days to clear. Dry hop on day 5 from pitch — 8 g Motueka.

Belle Saison drove FG to 1.004 — six points below the 1.010 target. Normal behaviour for the strain; Belle Saison commonly out-attenuates ale yeasts by 5–8 points at these gravities. ABV pushed from a 5 % target to 5.78 %.

Water treatment split between mash and sparge — 4 g calcium chloride each side, 2.2 g calcium sulphate mash plus 2.1 g sparge, 0.8 g magnesium sulphate in the mash only. A balanced calcium profile, sulphate-light by pale ale standards, in keeping with the saison / Kölsch target.

Packaging

Bottled 19.15 L. Final beer pH 4.6 — typical for saison-fermented beers, consistent with a small acid contribution from the citrus peels and the saison strain’s natural pH drop.

Numbers

Lineage

V2 is the maximalist version. Summer Haze V3 (2022-09-20) cuts the adjuncts back to ginger and honey only, simplifies the hop schedule to Cascade alone, and runs at higher OG (1.058 vs 1.047). The grain bill structure stays consistent across versions — that’s the defining continuity of the series.