Anyone suggest a simplish Belgian recipe to use up Saaz?

[norstar]

Hi all.

Christmas is coming, I'm out of grain/yeast so need to do a shop from scratch so am happy to buy relevant ingredients, and I'm after a reliable beer recipe I can bottle in time for the festive season.

I'm looking for something Belgian (I enjoy Leffe but have limited exposure to them), ABV above 6%, nice and fruity, using liquid yeast and which uses Saaz hops as I have those left.

I'm in Surrey, so bear in mind water limitations of chalky soil...

Any ideas?

[Dennis King]

There a lot here, never tried any myself.

[norstar]

Wow. That's great. I'll have a look through - thanks!

[lee1]

nice site dennis good recipies cheers

[serum]

For a nice mild belgian blonde try 4kg pilsner, 500g flaked wheat/wheat malt and 300g of honey. You can up the pilsner and honey to increase the strength.

You can use anything for bittering at 60 mins left in the boil and use saaz for flavour additions with 30 mins and 5 mins remaining. Aim for anything between 25-35 IBU

You can ferment with any good Belgian yeast. I've tried similar recipes with Wyeast french saison and La Chouffe yeast (Wyeast 3522 or White Labs WLP550) and they come out good. Start fermentation at about 17C and let it rise to 20 over 3-4 days. You can let the temp rise quite a bit after that to get all sorts of interesting yeast flavours and high attenuation.

[seymour]

Doesn't get any simplish than Pilsener malt + white table sugar in the boil.

[BigMouth]

Just bottled my first Saaz Belgian beer yesterday - quick taste sample is fantastic!

Made with pilsner and homemade light candi with Saaz to 20 IBU. Used t58 yeast, which I have re-harvested from FV for again soon. Mashed at 67C.

Left in FV for 7 days at 20C then 3 days in the garage (strong banana smell at this point) and then cold crash at 2C for 7 days (banana smell gone and dropped very clear) and bottled with more candi in priming bucket. At 4.7% it may be a little too small a Belgian for you but high hopes for 4 weeks time.

Have you put those Saaz into a brew yet?

[Barley Water]

Over here we would call what you brewed an Abby Single, Einkel or Pater's bier. I suspect that beers like that are going to rapidly gain in popularity for a couple of reasons. First of all as you noted, they taste great. Secondly, you can drink more than one (oh sure, you can down a couple Tripples but you'll soon become a blithering idiot). The new BJCP guidelines supposedly out later this year may well now include that style so over here anyway we will see more of them in contests. I did one a couple of years ago and entered it in the Belgian Specialty category and it actually won a metal; I was very surprised. I like to brew one to grow up the yeast for the bigger stuff; I get a great quaffing beer that I can get all snobby and drink from a challace and also avoid making a starter for the heavier Belgian styles. You can also get creative and add spices, funky sugars, adjuncts and character malts to really put your own stamp on it and the best part is that they are relatively easy to make.

[BigMouth]

Only in the bottle 10 days but I opened a 250ml brown bottle of this patiers bier (yep Barley I put it in a chalice) and it is delicious. Bright and carbonated higher than British ales, bubbles rising.
I've worked in Brussels and tried Duval and Deliurum (pink elephants on a glass really) in bars and hotels and this has "that" taste.

Will do this again. Even after one bottle can't wait for the comments of friends and family. This my 13th all grain. Lucky 13 huh.

[seymour]

Congrats, BigMouth. Glad it worked out so nice. Cheers.