Belgian beers are complex and widely varied in flavor. Commercially available varieties include the well known trapist ale Chimay and the esoteric and unpredictable farmhouse ale Phantome. Some closely guarded and secret Belgian monasteries will not sell their beers to tourists, let alone distribute them across the world. Needless to say, the world of Belgian beers is highly varied and often hard to come by.
This beer, much like my last beer, is in the realm of freestyle. It is a farmhouse ale, a style that allows for open fermenting in barns, spontaneous fermentation, mixed culture fermentation, and an endless array of adjuncts and aging methods.
This beer is the first of three I made from a split batch of farmhouse wort (5 gallons/1 keg/50 beers each batch). The grain bill is more complex than the last: 18 lbs of Belgian Pilsen, 2 lbs victory malt (it adds complex sugars that ordinary yeasts cannot convert to alcohol so are experienced as sweetness instead), 2 lbs biscuit, 2 lbs malted rye, 2 lbs unmalted wheat (adds a more nutty flavor than malted wheat).
For the hops, I eyeball a small handful of CTZ at the beginning of a 1 hours boil because farmhouse ales don't require much bitterness. I added two heaping handfuls of nugget hops at the end of the boil. Why not just dry hop the nugget to leave it uncooked? Nugget has a very distinctive herbal flavor when uncooked. It is good but not great. Cooking it for a very short time changes that into a more delicate and desirable flavor, often described as mango-ish when smelled in the boil but that doesn't tend to carry through to the beer without the use of a hopback to avoid the loss of essential oils: 
For the water, I used 75% reverse osmosis (RO) and 25% Los Angeles tap water, filtered through a carbon block to remove chlorine. I prefer to use RO water to avoid the flouride our government puts in our water. Normally, the LA water profile is great for malty, dark beers despite the poison added to it. Cutting it with all that RO water gives the finished beer a much softer appeal.
At only 4% this is sometimes called a "Belgian table beer". The wheat gives some solid head, but not as much as you might expect due to the massive addition of hops (and therefore oils which break head retention).
Many professional beer tasters talk about "hop forward beers" (often IPA's) and "malt forward beers". This is what I call a "yeast forward beer" despite all those hops because for a Belgian beer the yeast is where all the action is. I used the famous yeast isolated from Saison DuPont. When managed correctly, you pitch the yeast at the low range of fermentation (65F) and ramp it up to as high as 84F at the end of fermentation to gain a balance of black pepper, biscuit, and fruity esters. Heating it up at the end dries out the beer well and gives just a hint of funk.
I will often finish a beer like this on a brettomyeces to add complexity. Not this time. This beer is so small (low alcohol) and fresh (lots of fresh hops) that we are calling it done as soon as possible.
The front of the beer is slightly sweet with high notes of the hops, almost fruity but more herbal. The entirety of that front is balanced with an extremely desireable middle, which I wish would linger longer. It is complex and exciting and I wish I could share it with the world. The end is light and delicate. It leaves me yearning for more. I'm loving the nuance.
The verdict? This is my favorite, the best beer out of the 6 batches I did a few weeks ago. You can drink glass after glass, but I force myself to alternate a different beer in between glasses so that I can taste it like it is new. The keg is almost done already and I had to review it before I tap it this weekend.
If you like this post, please consider upvoting my comment on the #beersaturday post: https://steemit.com/beersaturday/@detlev/whoot-31-weeks-of-steemit-beersaturday-challenge-join-and-win-from-15-sbd-in-prizes
I love the color, looks great!!
Thank you!
I love a Belgian beer. My first brew was actually one designed to mimic the Chimay Blue.
Your brewing process is fascinating. And so much more advanced than where I am at yet.
Keep up the great work. :)
By the way, I had a weird experience with my beer in my review this week. It foamed up in an insane way at the first pour. Could this be because the bottle was released prior to the bottle fermentation being complete?
Thanks for the kind words.
Yeah I saw that cup of foam. It is possible that they bottled before the beer was dry enough but more likely that the batch or bottle got infected due to either poor sanitation or an infected batch of yeast from the lab. I know at least one brewery is suing White Labs for a multi-million dollar recall they had to do on exploding bottles. I've been meaning to find that post and check read it, just been busy. The wife has left town for the weekend for a stag party and I've got two babies to look after.
I also want to read your 100 days post. Man, I have been here far longer than that with far less results. Do you buy steem and power up? I should have been doing that from day 1 and my life would be a lot easier here. Not that gaining money from interacting here is my primary goal, but it does make the process more enjoyable. More so, by comparison to seeing other people abuse the system and get paid massive amounts for crap it annoys me. I've been trying to do this organically.
Would poor sanitation or infected yeast affect the flavour profile? The beer tasted fine. It’s concerning if it was one of these things though and seems likely.
I’d love your feedback on my 100 day post. I haven’t paid for any SBD or Steem but have converted a decent amount of SBD to Steem Power.
I kind of regret sending a large amount of SBD to the exchanges to buy other coins. I should have just sent this to Steem Power.
The abuse on here can be frustrating but I think it’s best to just focus on your own thing and build organically like you are. Gaming the system is likely to create pointless conflic.
Thanks for your compliments. :)
It could affect the flavor but often does not in beer judging situation where you get a gusher bottle and the beer is relatively fresh. There is little health concern associated with an infected bottle.
Yes, seeing the price of steem now I would agree with your assessment. I'm surprised by the value due to inflation but I suppose people are motivated to tie up supply as the get it.
Whatever it was didn't seem to impact on the flavour, although other reviews said quite different things about the beer. I imagine every batch is different though.
Cryptos are doing good things today. It might be time to sell some off and convert to SP. :)
I just made a complete noob error and overfilled my fermenter by 4 litres (filled to 24 litres rather than 21...). I read the side of the tank wrong somehow so now I have too much liquid.
Is there anything I should do about this? How would it affect the brew?
Hey, sorry I'm so slow to respond. It is probably too late for my comments to help. Typically when I have too much beer or not enough space, I will underpitch my yeast and once I know it is fermenting, I will keep it colder than normal so I don't blow the top off.
My sells on crypto are usually at X2+ so nothing of mine sold yesterday. I just bought 40K dogecoin at .something65. I always thought it was a joke and apparently so did the creator. The market appears to think differently with a $2B market cap. Some people think it is going to hit $1. I think I'll sell half at $.025
No problem mate
I ended up brewing up another 500g or malt with some citra hops to add a little more fruit to the brew and increase the sugars. It’s started to ferment now so we’ll see what comes of this brew. :)
I am kind of excited to find another Belgian beer fan. I am starting to suspect that I have some Belgian ancestors by how much I like their beer.
Hey @rantar, I'm in California and I'm all about farmhouse ales. I do a lot of brett beers, not a big fan of sours but sometimes I'll make them by accident. I'll often add brett C to fermentations that don't finish how I wish. I checked out your profile and I do appreciate your tech bent. The royal We are looking for blockchain programmers in case you have something like that interested in projects. Cheers!
Thanks for the thoughts, but I'm pretty happy at my current developer job. As for beers, my favorite beer of all time is Abt 12. Soo good. Someday when I get to Europe, I want to buy some of the original Westvleteren 12, but not sure when that is going to happen.
Where do you hail from?
I work in Eugene, Or, but I technically live in Junction City, Oregon, but nobody knows where that is outside the immediate area.
You've got a great beer scene up there, especially in Portland.
That is very true. I do enjoy hitting the breweries locally and occasionally up in Portland.
Upvote me I did the same for you thanks!
This is not the way to interact with your fellow Steemit users. It will result in your comments being flagged.