Ceallach

     According to Goose Island, many saisons are named after family members leading to Goose Island's saison being named after the brewer's daughter "Sofie". Along these lines I am planning on naming one of my finalized saisons after the she-devil.  Given that everything sounds better and fancier in french I decided to see if there was a French version of the name Kelly. Wikipedia and various dubious baby naming sites claim Kelly is strictly Irish, Scottish, and English in origin.  Apparently the given name Kelly is derived...

From the Irish given name CEALLACH or the surname derived from it Ó Ceallaigh.

I decided that Ceallach was a decent enough sounding name and that its meaning was possibly the following

The Irish word 'ceallach' translates to 'recluse' or 'hermit'

Among the meanings given in various 'name origin' sites for 'Ceallach' are bright-headed, war, strife or contention and some say that it is the Irish word for 'war', which it is not. The Irish word for war is 'cogadh'. The Irish word for 'bright' is near enough but it is spelt 'geal'. One site said that it could be from 'ceall', the genitive plural of 'cill' which means a church or monastery. 

That seems like quite a wide range of potential meanings to work with, so I'll just go with "bright-headed."  I plan on brewing a saison that is both bright in flavor and in color.  My intial thoughts are to brew a spiced saison with hibiscus and blood orange or blood orange zest.  I'm not sure if this will be part of my august mini batch this summer or come into fruition this following late spring.


The word on the forums is 4 oz of dried hibiscus is usually used for a 5.00 gallon batch so I'll use 2 oz. There has been some discussion of dry hopping or making a strong tea and adding it to the primary fermenter, but for now I think I'll just stick with all of it at the end of the boil (really flame out).


The next question is, where do you get it?


Some advice from beer advocate:

Any Mexican market should have it, but it will probably be called "jamaica" or "flor de jamaica". Its used in Mexico to make a tea that is quite delicious.. 

 The second potential ingredients is orange zest. for this I think I'm going to take a look at the saison Buffoon recipe in Radical Brewing and cut its estimates in half.  I'll get an exact recipe in a week or so and look into where I can get the additional ingredients.