Leffe Ruby

[MikeinCov]

Hi all,

Does anybody have a recipe for Leffe Ruby? Its one of my favorite beers but very hard to fine in the UK.

Thanks Mike

[seymour]

http://www.leffe.com/en/leffe-ruby#

"To drink a glass of Ruby outside on a terrace is a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss. Fruity, spicy, soft and refreshing, it first challenges the palate with its lightness and slightly woody flavours reminiscent of red fruits, followed by surprising hints of elderberry, strawberry and huckleberry."

Leffe Ruby
AB-InBev/Abbaye de Leffe S.A., Dinant, Belgium
Style: fruit beer
OG: 1048
ABV: 5.0%
Grainbill: 74.4% Belgian Pilsener Malt, 18.6% Corn Sugar, 7% Aromatic/Biscuit Malt, fermented with elderberry juice & possibly blended with strawberry and huckleberry aroma extracts at bottling? This will be the tricky part to clone, but multiple sites insist it uses some form of real fruit, not just "fruity-seeming" hops and yeast.
Hops: Hallertau (60 min)
IBU: ≈15
Colour: hazy pink
Yeast: proprietary AB-Inbev-Leffe yeast, originally a German Weizen yeast, but Wyeast 3463 at cool temp is similar

[far9410]

Him is that the same as leffe radieuse?, if so this is not far out


Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 11 lbs. 0.0 oz 4990 grams 73.90%
Special B 300 EBC 0 lbs. 7.0 oz 200 grams 3%
Aromatic malt 50 EBC 0 lbs. 7.0 oz 200 grams 3%
Sugar, Household White 0 EBC 0 lbs. 12.6 oz 360 grams 5.30%
Sugar Invert No. 3 Solid 130 EBC 0 lbs. 14.0 oz 400 grams 5.90%
Munich Malt 20 EBC 0 lbs. 14.0 oz 400 grams 5.90%
Caramalt 30 EBC 0 lbs. 7.0 oz 200 grams 3%

Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
hersbrucker Whole 2.30% 60 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 75%
Hallertauer Hersbrucker Whole 2.30% 10 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 25%

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.07
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 7.80% ABV
Total Liquor: 34.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 6.500232693 EBU
Colour: 58 EBC

for invert sugar i have brown candy crystals

what do you think?

oooh forgot to say yeast is WLP 500, but would perhaps be better with 530?

[seymour]

No, it's different by far from Radieuse, which is a good complex Belgian ale. Nice-looking recipe, there, by the way.

Leffe Ruby is just an AB-Inbev knock-off fruit beer marketed to women in France. No offense, Mike.

[MikeinCov]

Cheers Guys. Many many thanks.

No offence taken at all

By the way, did you find the recipe in a book or from experience?

Mike

[seymour]

Cheers Guys. Many many thanks.

No offence taken at all

By the way, did you find the recipe in a book or from experience?

Mike

My clone recipes are research-based--a best guess, but should be very close--relying on correspondence and what I've gleaned about the beer, the brewery, and their other brews...

Cheers,
-Seymour

[timbo41]

Sometimes I think Seymour is a spy......

[timbo41]

I'm intrigued by the use of low alpha hops for bittering.
It seems counter- intuitive.
Sensei Seymour, is there a rationale?

[seymour]

I'm intrigued by the use of low alpha hops for bittering.
It seems counter- intuitive.
Sensei Seymour, is there a rationale?

Well, this is no IPA. There's zero focus here on late-stage hoppy flavours and aromas, so you only use one small kettle addition at the beginning. Remember, especially with a low-IBU fruit beer, you don't need many hops regardless of variety or alpha acid percentage. Hallertau is a nice classic noble hop, which is what the broad category calls for. There was a time when Hallertau-ish noble hops were basically the only kind of hops used in brewing, at any stage of the process*; many German and Belgian breweries still insist it should be that way. I'm sure it's also linked to the fact Hallertau is by far the cheapest and most plentiful of all nobles. Plus Leffe is an AB/InBev product, and they already have futures contracts on thousands of acres of Hallertau. I'm sure they use shelf-stable concentrated Hallertau hop extract but a homebrewer needn't go to that level of authenticity. Besides, Hallertau is generally speaking more of a regional or hop family name than a specific cultivar, so you could substitute a modernized German high-alpha such as Perle is you prefer.

*I know that statement will outrage many English brewing historians, but close readers of my posts will recall I consider Fuggles and Goldings to be English landrace noble equivalents, which would count in that generalization. Whether the earliest English brewing hops were growing native there all along, brought there by Flemish weavers via Belgium via Bohemia or whatever, the point is they closely resembled Hallertau in the grand scheme of things...oh I better stop, I might be digging myself a deeper and deeper hole...

[seymour]

...can you explain how to make it as I'm unsure if
this is full or partial mash and the volumes/temperature of the water?

Again many thanks.

Mike

SEYMOUR LEFFE RUBY CLONE RECIPE

6 US Gallons = 5 Imperial Gallons = 22.7 Litres

GRAINBILL
74.4% = 7.37 lbs = 3.34 kg, Pilsener Malt (preferably Belgian if you can get it)
7% = 1.84 lbs = 835 g, Belgian Aromatic/Biscuit Malt
18.6% = .69 lb = 313 g, Corn Sugar (dry white powder like this, not fructose syrup, added to boil)

MASH for 60-90 min at 152°F/66.7°C, SPARGE to collect around 7.25 US Gal/6 Imperial Gal/27.4 L pre-boil.

HOPS
1.6 oz = 45.4 g, Hallertau, all at the beginning, no late additions

BOIL for 60 min. DO NOT COVER. With Pilsener malt it's especially important to drive-off DMS, an unpleasant cooked-corn aroma. At 15 min remaining, stir-in corn sugar, then add wort chiller (in order to disinfect it) and Irish Moss.

THE MYSTERIOUS FRUIT ADDITION(S):
This will be the trickiest part to accurately clone. The best info I've gleaned seems to indicate the beer is fermented with elderberry juice like this, strawberry extract like this and huckleberry extract like this. I really don't know, but I might suggest adding one 500ml bottle of elderberry juice directly to the chilled wort in the fermentor, then swirl it in, as opposed to the boil, so you don't drive away the precious aromas. As far as the strawberry and huckleberry extracts, I would try adding ½ teaspoon of each right before bottling, so the active fermentation CO2 doesn't blow it away. They are already sanitized alcohol solutions, so no worries. Depending on how it turns out, you can adjust next time.

YEAST
The proprietary Leffe yeast is actually a German weiss strain, as opposed to a true Belgian Wit strain. Don't waste your money on a liquid yeast this time, a cheap dry packet will suffice: Mauri Weiss, Mangrove Jack's Bavarian Wheat, Lallemand/Danstar Munich, NBS Weiss, Fermentis Safale K-97, Fermentis Safbrew WB-06…

STATS (will vary based on your efficiencies, temperatures, vigor of boil, etc):
OG: ≈1048-1050
FG: ≈1010-1012
ABV: ≈5.0%
IBU: ≈15
COLOUR: pink

[timbo41]

Nothing wrong with a divisive opinion as long as its informed!

[timbo41]

Hmm, UK brewers may find huckleberry a bit hard to procure. Amazon has got it, but it ain't cheap. Bilberry/ blueberry might be more obtainable, and is apparently similar? ??

[seymour]

Bump.

Just curious if you've had a chance to brew this, and if so, how closely it matches your memory of the real deal?

Cheers!

[MikeinCov]

Hi,

I haven't yet made it but will do in the next few weeks..

Mike

[MikeinCov]

Hi Seymour,

Just finished the brewing and it went very well -:) I got the FG & OG almost spot on. But I think I got the wrong Strawberry and Raspberry extracts http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Raspberry-Liq ... OU:GB:3160 and add these just to two sample bottles.. I was a bit worried by the 'oil slick' when I tested this and was very harse. So I didn't want to ruin the rest and have some beer to drink -:)

Mike