Simple Belgian Summer Ale

[adm]

Today's brew is meant to be something along the lines of a simple brew a Trappist monk might have on their table after a hard day's work....more or less.

So. Here we go:

Grain BIll:
2.25Kg Lager Malt
2.25Kg Maris Otter (OK - it should probably all be Lager malt, but I wanted to use them up equally and also add a bit of flavour and colour)
0.5Kg Aromatic Malt (also to use up.....)

Hops:
40g 5.2% Bobek FWH
20g 5.2% Bobek 15 mins
20g 5.2% Bobek 80C steep
I had 80g of Bobek left from Saturday's brew and thought they should go to a good use. Normally for this kind of beer I'd use Goldings, but I didn't have any and these are kind of related. Also - probably too many late hops, but WTF..

Others:
Yeast - 1.3L flying starter of WLP500 (Chimay?). Saturdays wort pitched with the yeast has fermented out completely, so I just bunged it all in as it's not a flocculent yeast so cold crashing probably wouldn't help much.
Protafloc tab @ 15 mins
Water treatment: CRS to 20mg/l, 1 tsp gypsum in each of mash and boil

Pics:


First up, some hops...Bobek all the way today.


And some grain


The brewery of the future....check out the iPad running Beer Alchemy (and the mug of tea)


All mashed in and no place to go. Hit my temp pretty closely. No cold oats issues today.


First wort hops. There's some Gypsum under there somewhere....


First runnings


This is better than the Weiss....at least there's some hops swimming today.


Boiling


Yucky crap at the end


All pitched and aerated with the flying starter


And I picked up 24L at 1.048 of this.

All's well that ends well. Here's hoping this will ferment out (@20C) by Friday so I can keg it before I go on holiday. If not, it's getting kegged anyway and we'll just call it "secondary"....

[danbrew]

Nice one adm, looks like you've got a nice view out the window while you're brewing too!

Is this one of those beers where the yeast does all the work to add character to the beer? I'm a dried yeast brewer but I'm wanting to try some different (simple) styles...

Will you be cold conditioning with it being lager malt? I don't have that facility you see...

[mysterio]

Looks good ADM, I aspire to have a brew hut like that. And the iPad, that is high living, makes a change from scrawling the strike temp and liquor volume on your palm with an old biro.

[adm]

Yeah....this is an "all about the yeast" one.

(And basically, I do brew in a field)

I'm hoping for a kind of "pear drops" flavour from this if you get my drift. This yeast seems to give me that early on (at least in a simple beer like this), then if you reuse it for heavier beers you (or at least I) get all kinds of stone fruit flavours.

As for the cold conditioning,.....not really.

I don't think it's the malt that needs that, more the yeast for lagers. Although I do have temp control, and assuming it's fermented out by Friday - I'll just bung this into a fridge set at 12C while I am on holiday. Thinking about that, it probably is cold conditioning.....

[adm]

Looks good ADM, I aspire to have a brew hut like that. And the iPad, that is high living, makes a change from scrawling the strike temp and liquor volume on your palm with an old biro.

I'm a technocrat Mysti.....just spent the last three weeks in Cupertino...

It's the weighing out grain that does it for me. Mind you, a £1 calculator would do the same job. Still, it's nice to be able to record your brew day live and have it all sync up in the "cloud"....if that kind of thing floats your boat.....

[GARYSMIFF]

l love the field outside of your window so kewl

[adm]

Well...this one's off like a rocket this morning! (and it smells nice too)

I think my goal of having both of these recent beers fermented out and kegged by Friday is going to be just fine.

[adm]

That's down to 1.080 this morning....so all kegged and gassed up. Sample tasted good too.

[mysterio]

1.008... right?

[adm]

Doh. Yeah. Either that or I've figured out how to increase sugar content with yeast. The hydro was definitely doing a sneaky periscope impression and not a Tall Ships mast impression.

That's what happens when you lay off the brewing for a while.....