Tasting Notes: Bitter Saison

Or rather, not-so-bitter belgian pale ale.  This is the beer I brewed with yeast grown up from a bottle of De La Senne Taras Boulba.  I was going for something similar to the original beer---pale, bitter, and hoppy---and also trying to get a sense of how their yeast strain performed.  Its a pleasant enough beer (J really likes it), but not what I was going for.  It has a nice gentle bitterness and noticeable hop character, but is a pale imitation of the characterful qualities of beers like Taras Boulba or XX Bitter.

The De La Senne yeast did reasonably well.  At first the beer had lots of sulphurous off flavours, but these have dissipated over time.  It didn't attenuate as much as I expected, ending at around 1.010, and I was also surprised that it didn't seem to be a good top-cropper (though now I think about it I've no reason to think that DLS do this).  I wish my brewing schedule had allowed me to brew several beers with this pitch, as I suspect I'd need to let it go through several generations before it would really come into its own (as far as I know, De La Senne have been repitching it since they opened Looks like I was wrong about that, but they do repitch through up to 30 generations).  I have some of the yeast cake stored in the fridge, and I may try growing it up in a month or so after I finish my current cycle of beers.

Appearance: Pale yellow colour with a slight haze.  From memory, I'd say its pretty close to Taras Boulba.  Tight head with fairly good retention and some lacing down the glass.

Smell: Grassy and floral, with a gentle pepperiness (white pepper); sweet and bready pilsner malt beneath it.  A bit like De Ranke XX Bitter if it was dialed down significantly.  Slightly plasticy aroma in the background as it warms that I don't like.

Taste: Herbal and peppery at first (but again, white pepper, not like the phenolic character I dislike in strains lime 3711); then slightly sweet and crackery malt before a dry and gently bitter finish.  Reconizable DLS yeast character.

Mouthfeel:  The mouthfeel is a little thin: surprising considering it finished higher than most of my saisons do.  Higher carbonation might help here, but I think if I brewed this again I'd also use more wheat.

Drinkability & Notes:  This batch didn't turn out how I wanted, but we're getting through it pretty quickly.  I was considering entering it in a competition as a Belgian Pale Ale, but I don't really know what judges expect from that style, and since J likes it so much I don't think I'll waste the bottles.  As I said, it does make me want to experiment more with this yeast strain, perhaps in combination with some fresher and more citrusy hops.

Brew Day: Bitter Saison

This post is about another attempt to brew a beer inspired by Brasserie de la Senne's Taras Boulba.  But before I get to that I thought I'd mention that I've started a Facebook page for this blog; I don't know if I'll keep it, but my thought was that I could post shorter things about beers that don't make it onto here, along with links that I find interesting etc.  In fact the first link I posted was to a recent interview with Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne.  Its in French, but I managed to make my way through it despite my pretty poor knowledge of the language----context and knowledge of brewing vocabulary helps, and its an interesting interview that's worth the effort.

Its no secret how much I love this brewery.  You only need to look at the way they describe their beers to see that they fit my palate: low-alcohol, bitter, dry.  But there's also the way in which they make beers that are genuinely informed by a knowledge of tradition and locale ("bières à l’ancienne", as they put it on their site) without falling into either sentimentality or fantasy about the past nor being solely backwards-looking or conservative in their attitude towards brewing.

The interview builds on some of the things mentioned in the Philosophy section of their site (translated into English here) as well as things Yvan mentions in his essay on saisons in Farmhouse Ales.  He says that "bières à l’ancienne" is a kind of catch-all concept, and that really they brew the beers they love to drink.  But again, "bières à l’ancienne" can be divided into two categories---those characterized by their bitterness, and those characterized by their acidity.  That pretty much sums up the kind of beers I brew, particularly the ones I call "saisons"---my starting point for those beers is Yvan's essay and the beers he brews, which I think are pretty different from the majority of saisons brewed in the U.S.

After not being able to find fresh Brasserie de la Senne beers for several months due to problems with their distributor, I've been very lucky recently as a local store got in a shipment of relatively fresh bottles of Taras Boulba and Zinnebir (along with some equally fresh De Ranke XX Bitter, which was quite a treat).

One nice thing about having fresh bottles on hand is that it presents the opportunity to try growing up a pitch of healthy yeast, and that's exactly what I did with my last bottle.  Yvan discusses the brewery's yeast in the interview, saying that it originates from a well-respected Belgian brewey and was "Le plus beau cadeau de ma vie" (the greatest gift in his life).   I sniffed the starters a few times as I was growing it up, and it certainly smelt familiar, but all I could think of was Taras Boulba and Zinnebir.  I wonder if the brewery is De Ranke or somewhere else?  One thing that is striking is that, though distinctive, the yeast not quite as expressive as the strains usually classified as being for saisons in the US.

I decided to base the first beer I brewed with the yeast on a bitter saison I made a few months ago, the distinctive feature of which was that it used massive amounts of low alpha hops.  That earlier beer was largely a product of circumstance---some free Celeia hops were included in an order from Label Peelers, and since they had a low AA content I saw no reason not to to throw large quantities into a single beer.  It turned out to be one of my favourite saisons to date, and the one that was probably most reminiscent of Taras Boulba.  I liked it so much that I think I probably drank the almost the entire batch myself.

This beer was brewed along the same lines, only this time I used low AA Hallertau Mittelfruh in place of the Celeia, and supplemented them with some Bramling Cross to increase the spicy, citrusy character.  My first instinct was to repeat the grist from the earlier beer, which included a reasonable amount of unmalted spelt.  I think this gives the beer a slightly fuller mouthfeel, which helps prevent the bitterness from becoming astringent and unpleasant.  However I was pressed for time during this brew day and wasn't able to do a cereal mash, so I went with a more straight forward blend of pilsner, wheat and Munich in a single-infusion mash.  It will be interesting to see how much of a difference the spelt really makes.

As is my usual practice with saisons in this gravity range, I left the beer in my fermentation chamber for 24 hours in the high 60s; today I checked to see if fermentation was underway, and turned the chamber off to let the yeast free-rise to wherever it wants to go.  Fermentation looked healthy and vigorous, and smelt fantastic.  I'll probably try to top-crop some of the yeast in the next day or two so that I can brew more beers with it and perhaps even try streaking it out and isolating it properly for long-term storage.

Recipe:


Measured O.G: 1.040
Measured F.G:

Mash: 149°F

Malt:

84.0% Pilsner
10.0% Wheat Malt
6.0% Munich

Hops:

Hallertau             60               12.8 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Bramling X         60               14.9 IBUs     (10g@2.69%)
Hallertau             20               4.30 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Hallertau             10               2.60 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Hallertau             5                 2.10 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Bramling X         0                 0.0   IBUs     (15g@2.69%)

Yeast:

De la Senne

Tasting Notes: Old World's Mantra

This beer was based on the recipe Yvan de Baets contributed to For the Love of Hops.  It was the first of a couple of beers that ended up attenuating significantly more than expected, most likely as a result of pitching too much super-healthy top-croppped yeast.  Yvan's predicted final gravity was 1.012, whereas this went down an extra 5 or 6 points to something like 1.006-7!

I remember when I first started home-brewing my main concern was to make my beers as dry as possible.  I find many commercial beers too sweet (especially American interpretations of English and Belgian pale ales), and in those early days before I made starters or top-cropped yeast, my beers would also often finish on the high side.  As a result I'm often a little blasé about where my beers finish, basically just trying to make them as dry as I can.

After tasting this and a couple of other bitter beers I've brewed recently straight after tasting some fresh Taras Boulba at Zwanze Day, I've decided I need to finesse things a little more here.  Obviously Brasserie De La Senne beers lean firmly towards the bitter side of things, and so might seem unbalanced to some.  But to my mind they do have a balance of their own, and its something I think is missing from my beers.  One or two extra gravity points, or perhaps a water adjustment, would round out my bitter beers just enough to give them that added complexity and maybe a slight softness that they're missing right now. The challenge is to come up with my own sense of what a balanced beer tastes like, and what's involved in brewing one on my system.

That's not to knock this beer, which I've been enjoying a lot.  But I take this silly brewing thing pretty seriously, and want to brew the best beer possible.  I've made the transition from obvious off-flavours to clean beer to beer that has something like the flavour profile I'd like.  This next transition, where you really come to understand and perfect the balance of the flavours you're looking for, seems to me like a more difficult and interesting one.

Appearance: Hazy when poured from the fridge.  Nice colour though, and would look lovely if it were bright.  Tight, stable head, and decent lacing.

Smell: Earthy hops, slight fruitiness that seems like a mix of the hops and malt.  Pretty generic description I know.  It smells like a Bitter, let's put it that way.

Taste: Brief sweetness up front, but quickly becomes slightly spicy, and then a tingling minerally bitterness.  Struggling to come up with non-beery descriptions

Mouthfeel: Lowish carbonation works well.  Dry and very drinkable, with a firm persistent bitterness that isn't at all harsh.

Drinkability & Notes: Despite what I said above, I've been really enjoying this beer.  It goes nicely with food (pictured with homemade bread/chutney), and the bitterness makes it very moreish.  But it is a bit one-dimensional, and would be improved if I could round out the flavours without adding too much sweetness.  Definitely a recipe I'll come back to.

Brew Day: Old World’s Mantra

What is Yvan de Baets’ favourite kind of beer?  The saisons he writes about in Farmhouse Ales?  The lambics brewed by his neighbours in Brussels?  According to For the Love of Hops, it’s English bitter!

“Yvan de Baets eschews the words “beer style”, but ask him the question most brewers duck, what his favourite is, and he’s quick to answer.  He loves bracing, bitter beers from Great Britain, not exactly surprising given how much he appreciates bitterness itself, a quality apparent in Brasserie de la Senne beers.”

I was pretty chuffed to read that, and of course I had to brew the recipe that accompanied it.  Earlier in the book you can find Yvan waxing philosophical about bitterness, connecting human appreciation for it to the emergence of culture, and ending with a rousing encomium to modern bitter beers:

“I see the bitter beers we make as liquid communication that talks to the people’s intelligence, and delivers them from the ‘manipulations by the stomach’ the agro-food industry is using.  By promoting bitter beers, something that had almost been lost forever some decades ago, craft brewers help the human culture of taste to be reborn and to get stronger.  They show respect not only for themselves, but also for the people who drink their delightful beers.  And they do all this by making something that is a never-ending source of pleasure for their customers.  Bitter is definitely better.”

The recipe at the back of the book is called “Old World’s Mantra”, and is a sort of celebration of the old world hop varieties it employs.  I brewed it directly after the Keeping Porter on Sunday (a long day!), and my notes are pretty short.  I stuck to the recipe in the book as far as possible, but I was a little short of Munich malt, so I had to sub in a small portion of Vienna for some of it (I’ve copied the recipe as it is in the book below).  I also didn’t have time to do the infusion mash schedule Yvan provides, but if I brew this again (and I’m sure I will) I’ll certainly follow it.  The other modification of note was that I added gypsum to get my sulfate levels up to around 250ppm.  This is part of an on-going investigation into how water modifications affect my bitter beers.  I’ll write a post about what I’m learning in a few weeks.

Finally, Yvan specifies a neutral, highly attenuative, flocculent yeast.  The listed final gravity is 1.012 (74.25% apparent attenuation), so I think he must mean attenuative for an English strain.  I went with WY1469, as its what I’ve been using recently.  I’ll probably use WY1028 next time I brew this for comparison.

Recipe:

Measured O.G.	1.048
Measured F.G.
ABV.
Mash:	151°F
Malt:
82% Pilsner
12.0% Munich
6% Medium Crystal
Hops:
Challenger	60min	44.3 IBUs	(25g@ 8.9%)
Styrian Goldings	10 min	1.4 IBUs	(20g@ 1.8%)
Styrian Goldings	Whirlpool	1.4 IBUs	(15g@ 1.8%)
Bramling Cross	Whirlpool	4.7 IBUs	(15g@ 6.0%)
Yeast:
WY1469

Tasting Notes: Belgian Dry Stout

I’m pretty busy with work and school at the moment, so I haven’t had a chance to write some of the posts I had planned for this week.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to continue the Farmhouse Ales series this weekend with a post on blended beer.  In the meantime, though, I thought I’d post some quick tasting notes on the Belgian Dry Stout I brewed a while back.

A quick preview: the beer is OK---pretty tasty, in fact---but not quite what I was going for.  As I mentioned in the original post, it was inspired by De La Senne’s Stouterik, but as it stands its a very different beer.  For one thing, I’d be surprised if most people would pick up on the fact that this was brewed with a Belgian yeast, unless you told them.  I also think the creaminess from the flaked barley ends up suppressing some of the dark chocolate and roasted notes I wanted: they are there, but very subtle.

I’ll certainly be brewing this one again, but next time I think I’ll replace the barley with malted wheat, and perhaps add a dash of extra dark crystal or even some Special B.  I think such a beer would still fit the “Belgian Dry Stout” description: if anything, these changes bring it closer to something like Beamish rather than Guinness (see Michael Dawson’s `Beamishish’, featured in the most recent episode of Chop and Brew).

Appearance: Looks black in glass, but more like reddish brown when held up to light.  Thin off-white head.  Moderate lacing.

Smell: Bready sweetness and some very light spice (could be from aroma hops or yeast).  Maybe some dark fruit, and very subtle roast notes, becoming more pronounced as it warms up.

Taste: Sweet at first, coating tongue, then more fruity with coffee-like roasted flavours, almost ashy, but very subtle; blending quickly into a nice bitterness in the mid to back palate.  Very slight tartness. 

Mouthfeel: Silky and full, especially for such a low gravity beer.  More than I would like in fact: I think it covers over some of the roast and chocolate notes, and makes the beer seem less dry.  This is one of the reasons I’m going to try wheat in place of flaked barley next time.

Drinkability & Notes: Like I said, a pretty nice beer, but not what I was going for.  I want more of the dark and chocolatey notes, and something drier and less silky.  I’m happy that it doesn’t scream “Belgian yeast!” at you, and I think I can push it further in the direction I wanted with a few modifications.

Brew Day: Belgian Dry Stout

I’ve brewed a few times in the last two weeks, using the pitch of 3522 that figured in this post about top-cropping.  The yeast I cropped there was for an experimental recipe: a belgian dry stout.

This is another beer inspired by Yvan de Baets and Brasserie de la Senne, but this time I decided to brew this recipe even before I tasted the beer that is its inspiration.  I have a slightly strange habit of trawling through brewery websites to read descriptions of beers I’ve never tried.  They often give me ideas for recipes, and it fits with the general idea of trying to make beers that I know I’ll enjoy without deliberately setting out to clone any particular commercial example.  I’d already heard Yvan and Bernard describe the beer in this video from Shelton Brothers, and the description of Stouterik on the brewery’s website was enough to pique my interest further: light, dry, and freshly bitter with complex roasted notes.

I decided to take a typical recipe for a dry Irish stout and ferment it with the Wyeast Ardennes strain.  This has a fairly subdued character if fermented in the 60s, and can add a slight tartness that I thought would complement the style.  The only other change I made was substituting chocolate for some of the roasted barley.  This changed the colour slightly, but I hope it will add to the complexity of the final beer.

One thing that struck me as I formulated the recipe was how similar a basic dry stout is to the saisons de Baets describes in Farmhouse Ales (see quote in this post).  Obviously dry stouts are dry(!), and have relatively low alcohol.  They are heavily bittered with a large dose of low alpha hops, and contain a substantial amount of adjuncts in the form of barley or wheat.

After formulating the recipe, I had to wait a few weeks before brewing, and in that time I had a chance to pick up a few bottles of Stouterik (along with a very different Belgian stout, Drie Fonteinen’s Zwet.be).  The De la Senne beer is lovely: dry and slightly fruity, with a subtle roastiness and firm bitterness, neither of which make it acrid or astringent.  It has some dark fruit notes, which makes me wonder if there isn’t also some crystal in their beer (it may also be their yeast).  Perhaps next time I’ll add 1-2% dark crystal or Special B to bring this out.  The Drie Fonteinen beer was also enjoyable: it had a fairly light, grapey sourness, some chocolate and roast notes, and that slight but distinctive burnt rubber aroma and flavour that this brewery’s beer often seem to have.  As it warmed it began to taste like a slightly sour chocolate, and the grape notes became more like currants or red fruits. Unlike the De la Senne beer, its not something I can imagine drinking regularly, but I’d certainly buy it again.

Anyway, below is the recipe as I brewed it.  This is a work in progress, and I expect to come back to it again based on how this one turns out.  Now that I’ve tasted Stouterik, I don’t think this will be much like it---I don’t think their yeast is the Ardennes strain, for instance, and for some reason I have in mind that their “English aromatic hop particularly appreciated by connoisseurs” is Challenger rather than Fuggles. But I think this recipe will provide a good starting point for further development.  If I decided I want to make it more like the original, I can always culture yeast from a bottle and tweak the recipe.  

Update: Tasting Notes.

Recipe:

   

Estimated O.G.	1.040
Measured O.G.	1.037
Measured F.G.	1.009
ABV.	3.7%
Mash:	150°F
Malt:
69% Maris Otter
20% Flaked Barley
8% Roasted Barley
3% Chocolate
Hops:
Fuggles	60	36.8 IBUs	(45g @4.1%%)
Fuggles	10	1.8 IBUs	(10g @ 4.`%)
Yeast:
Wyeast Belgian Ardennes (3522)

Bitter Belgian

This post is based on one of my favourite beers, from one of my favourite breweries: Brasserie De La Senne’s Taras Boulba.  One of the founders of the brewery is Yvan de Baets, whose chapter on saisons in Farmhouse Ales has been a reliable source of inspiration for me (expect a few posts based on it soon). I imagine that Taras Boulba is deliberately reminiscent of the beers he described there, and since I love the summary description that ends the chapter, I’ll quote it in full:

A saison must therefore be low in alcohol (in the modern—and therefore Belgian—sense of the word in any case), around 4.5 to 6.5%.  It must be highly attenuated (90-95% on average, if not more, as apparent attenuation) and dry.  It must also be either sour or very bitter (with bitterness obtained by the use of a massive amount of hops low in alpha acid).  It shouldn’t in any case be smooth.  If spices are used, it should be with the utmost moderation.  A saison is not by any means a spice soup.  Ideally, it should be fermented, at least partially, by wild yeasts as well as cultured varieties.  An authentic saison has a small “wild” side, rustic, indefinable, far from the clean aspect of certain engineered beers today.  In one word, it must have an extraordinary character.

Taras Boulba surely fits the first half of this description: dry, low in alcohol, bitter and citrusy from large doses of low alpha hops.  And that is exactly the kind of beer I tried to brew here. 

But although this beer is inspired by Taras Boulba, it was never supposed to be a clone.  This is the way I tend to take up commercial beers and clone recipes when I’m home brewing: I think about what it is that makes me enjoy the beer, and try to brew something that I will enjoy for the same reasons.   Obviously this means that the beer I end up with might taste very different from its inspiration in a side-by-side comparison, and that’s exactly what you have here.

The recipe (reproduced below) was very simple: a 90/10 split of base malt and wheat, hopped aggressively with low-alpha varieties (I was using up some old hops from previous years), and fermented with a characteristically belgian strain (albeit not the most highly attenuative).

The result was a fairly good beer, but it needs more work if it’s going to match the beer from De La Senne.  The flavour of the malt is not really there, and as a result the beer is more fruit-forward from the hops.  While this fades quickly to a pleasant dry bitterness, it doesn’t have the full profile I was looking for.  I almost have the bitterness right, but it lacks the minerally cripsness of the original, a flavour that blends wonderfully with the graininess of the pilsner malt.

Unfortunately the bottle of Taras Boulba I had for this was pretty old, bottled over 8 months ago and probably sitting unrefrigerated on the shelf at Binnys since it arrived in the US.  (They still have some Schieven IPA on their shelves, which as far as I can tell was brewed once in 2012, making the bottles 2 years old!)  I will try to pick up a fresher bottle some time soon—I noticed a few in the fridge when I visited The Beer Temple a few weeks ago.  Because of its age, the hoppy citrus  aroma of the beer was almost completely gone, leaving instead an almost flinty smell along with the grainy aroma of the pilsner malt.  J said it reminded her of Half Acre’s Pony Pilsner, which makes a lot sense to me.  The mouth-feel is slightly creamy from the carbonation, but not in a cloying way, ending dry and assertively bitter at the back of the tongue.  Here are my tasting notes for my home brew:

Appearance: Hazy orange.  Thick white head that dissipates to 1/4 inch and lingers while I drink beer.

 

Smell: Very fruity.  Orange jelly sweets (if you’re British, it smells exactly like Fruit Pastilles) and marmalade.  Floral notes in the background.

 

Taste: Very fruity, following nose (Fruit Pastilles again!).  Slight sweetness from malt that accentuates the fruitiness, but malt itself does not make a clear flavour contribution as it does with TB. 

 

Mouthfeel: Creamy at first, with very slight wateriness in middle that is not there with TB.  Fades to firm, dry, slightly tannic bitterness.

 

Drinkability & Notes: Not a bad attempt.  Far more fruity/hoppy than the Taras Boulba, but partly due to age of the latter.  I think when TB is fresh it has a lemony aroma that I associate with European hops; mine is all oranges from the EKG.  Both firmly bitter, but TB more so, with minerally/flinty taste that blends pleasantly with flavour from the malt.  These almost completely missing from my version beyond slight sweetness.  I used 2 Row because I was running out of pilsner, and it definitely makes a difference to the flavour.  What’s more, the orange colour is striking given recipe.  Does the 2 Row make this much of a difference, or has something else happened (oxidized)?  I expected it to be pale and yellow, like Taras Boulba and the saisons I’ve brewed with a 90/10 : pilsner/wheat split, but its much darker.

 

Recipe:

   

Estimated O.G.	1.038
Measured O.G.	1.037
Measured F.G.	1.006
ABV.	4.0%
Mash:	149°F
Malt:
90% 2 Row
10% Wheat Malt
Hops:
Crystal	FWH	14.1 IBUs	(15g @ 4.29%)
EKG	30	6.9 IBUs	(15g @ 4.5%)
EKG	15	7.2 IBUs	(30g @ 4.5%)
Crystal	Whirlpool	3.6 IBUs	(15g @ 4.29%)
EKG	Whirlpool	3.8 IBUs	(15g @ 45%)
Crystal	Dry Hop		(15g)
EKG	Dry Hop		(30g)
Yeast:
Wyeast Belgian Ardennes (3522)