American Saison Tasting

Over the summer I decided to brew my first saison, at the time I had never tried any commercial versions of the style. In preparation I did some reading in Brew Like A Monk, Designing Great Beers , and homebrewtalk.com so I felt comfortable with my recipe and what I expected from the beer. While I feel I had a good plan I forgot to put any simple sugars into the   beer so it ended up not being as dry as I would have liked. Also I stepped away from style but only a bit by adding homemade extracts of lavender and thyme (made by soaking the herbs in vodka and filtering)
Notes:
Appearance: Translucent copper/orange color. Off white head with reasonable (not great) head retention. Brilliant clarity
Aroma: Herbal/earthy esters and spiciness from rye malt/ thyme dominate. Hints of lavender.
Flavor: Herbal, slightly malty, smooth bitterness (in balance with beer) somewhat thick/ heavy mouthfeel, high level of carbonation gives a clean finish


Next time I brew this I will be sure to add the simple sugar (will be honey) to dry it out a bit, I will probably also tweak the malt bill to further dry the beer out. Also it needed a little more age on it, by the time it really hit it's prime there was only about 20 beers left.