All Grain - Lemon Balm Saison

Turns out both my kegs are more or less empty, I had to resort to a Christmas beer I had in the pantry last night!

My plant went nuts this year - 4ft high - so I decided to chop it down on brew day hoping the lemon sherbert flavour would lend itself well to this style. It's also a natural anxiety remedy which is why I keep it, so I'm hoping for a mild calming effect.

Haven't set beersmith up properly yet and only weighed grain by eye, but I'm aiming for OG above 1.040.

I'm also adding some dried orange peel (1tbsp), black pepper corns (1 tsp) and coriander seeds (1 tsp) to the mix.

Also planning a basic Galaxy/ahtanum hoppy pale which I might not bother posting.

Will be interesting to see how it comes through! Should be quite a quick turnaround?

I also used a fair whack of bobek in my saison yesterday. Peppercorns, juniper and caraway in my one

All done at 1.041

All done at 1.041

A good eye then! Will you be running the French Saison high? I've had a few really tasty beers with it that have been fermented 27c+

Just room temp I guess. It's fermenting fine today but smells very earthy and eggy, not like the English yeasts I usually use at all, and possibly down to the lemon balm which can taste quite green. I will reserve judgement for the finished beer.

Kegged today at 1.006 so 4.6%, about ideal for me.
So far the beer is very phenolic to the point where I thought it was infected - bordering on TCP - but then the pack does say it's a very phenolic yeast.
The taste is dry, tart and a little funky with a mild citrus, not much spice, not bad but tasted at 25c so not an accurate taste test, I'm in two minds whether to stick this in the cask room for 2 weeks at 12c or just chill it down and serve it. I'm concerned that the phenols have reacted with my water and created an excessive phenol flavour.
Not much lemon balm coming through yet, but we'll see how it develops.

did you put all the balm from the photo in...im sticking with lemon grass till you report back on flavour