Belgian Hoppy Blonde (BE-256)

About This Beer

Second run at the Duvel-inspired Belgian hoppy blonde, and the batch the recipe was written for. Grist, hops, water, mash and boil identical to the first round in May. Only the yeast changed.

Recipe came from brewing notes shared by Dimitry Staelens of Adept Brewery in Belgium, who specified SafAle BE-256. The shop had none in May, so round one went out on Froth Tech Wildling FTW1 instead.

The two pull in different directions. Wildling is fruity and phenolic, and round one leaned so far into the spicy peppery side it read almost saison-like. BE-256 is POF-negative and cannot make those phenolics at all, so what it gives is the banana and pear of isoamyl acetate, leaving more room for the Simcoe and Celeia.

Brew Day

Mashed in half past one on 23 July, boil off at twenty-five past four.

Grain bed compacted halfway through the mash and stopped recirculating. Broken up and remixed to get the flow going again. Flaked rice and wheat malt are both classic bed-compactors, so worth doing deliberately next time rather than as a rescue.

Whirlpool repeated round one’s change rather than the written recipe, cooler and longer, so any difference in the finished beer belongs to the yeast.

Fermentation

Both packets in dry onto wort still warm, around five in the afternoon. Down to the start temperature by half past eight.

Cooling hysteresis widened progressively from there and the target walked up behind the beer as it climbed, since a rushed ramp turns Belgian esters hot and solventy.

Dry hop on the afternoon of day three, called on gravity rather than the calendar, with the beer still falling and the yeast active enough to clean up any diacetyl from hop creep. Spunding valve on at the same time to start banking natural carbonation.

Target back down later that afternoon and held there, since hops sitting in warm beer give up harsher, more vegetal character. Capped the rise well short of the protocol peak, and on this wort it cost nothing.

Packaging

Cooling from 1 August, stepped down in stages with the hysteresis left wide so the fermenter drifted toward the 10°C a Lower Hutt garage sits at in winter rather than being chilled. Fridge only took over for the last leg.

Kegged 5 August, with a little into a PET bottle with a carbonation cap so it can be tasted early without broaching the keg. Spunding valve had been banking pressure since day three, so a good part of the carbonation was already in solution before any gas went on. Keg sits a shade under the Duvel-style 3.5 volumes the recipe is chasing.

Tasting notes to follow.