Finally got around to brewing today. I decided to brew 10 gallons. I ended up with this recipe:
28 lbs. Avangard pils
2 lbs. Weyermann wheat malt (for nice foamy head)
1 lb. Weyermann melanoidin malt
0.5 lbs. Dingeman biscuit malt
Mash at 150°F for 90 min
Boil for 2.5 hours to concentrate the wort
1 oz. Admiral hops 120 min
0.5 oz. Sorachi Ace 120 min
1 oz. Admiral hops 45 min
0.5 oz. Sorachi Ace 45 min
2 oz. Saaz 15 min
1.5 oz Styrian Goldings 5 min
1.5 oz. Strisselspalt knockout
Chilled to 62°F
Now, the sad part. As stated at the beginning I was going to use a yeast cake from a WY3724 saison. I racked the beer out of the bucket into a keg. While doing so, I notice a little brown dot floating around. At first I think it is a bit of dried krausen gunk floating around, or perhaps some yeast colony, and didn't think anything of it.
When I am nearly at the end of transfer, I see another one. And then another. I put my head into the bucket and peer at them closely.
Fruit flies! I don't know if they got in from air lock suck back, or if they crawled under the aluminum foil I placed over the airlock hole initially in order to avoid a stuck ferment.
Oh well. I tasted the hydrometer sample and it tasted fine....just like flat Dupont. But....not wishing to use a yeast cake with dead fruit flies in it, I dumped it.
Fortunately I have a growler with WY3711 slurry preserved and all ready to go as a back up plan. So I pitched that.