Pelforth recipe

[IPA]

Help please. Has anyone a recipe for Pelforth Brune it's been made since 1926 and still going strong. I have tried several times to formulate one without much success. The taste is unique and therefore I have not much to go on.
Thanks in anticipation.

[lancsSteve]

Lovely beer!
http://www.morgenrot.co/pelforth.shtml
"Brune (Dark beer) - 6.5% abv
Mahogany coloured with spicy aromas
plus some caramel and roasted malt
in its full bodied taste.
A true connoisseurs beer with great heritage."

Try starting with thread at http://www.brassageamateur.com/forum/vi ... p?p=119152 which links through to someone's test at http://hopville.com/recipe/474140 however that must be enterred wrong and mean munich (not caramunich) as 45% of grist!

That at least gives you outline stats to start from.

Use a neutral yeast ideally wlp072 http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/strains_wlp072.html - (which is a platinum strain so no idea when next out but rob at malt miller should be able to get it) Failing that k97 dried is a european ale yeast if you can get it (barley bottom used to stock) or last resort of nottingham.

Maybe try aramis hops as a french variety else spalt.

Definitely use good amounts of weyerman (not UK) vienna and light munich malts and probably a little bit of one of the darker crystal malts like caramunich - not sure about the raosted malt aspect though a little debittered carafa special would add dark colours and smooth roastiness rather than harshness.

Hope that helps - good luck!

[far9410]

Excellent beer, perhaps a bit beyond my capabilities at the moment , but would be interested to know how it goes. Just bottled some dark bitter in pelforth swing top bottles!

[super_simian]

Only beer I relished on my all too short 3 days in Paris; I'd love a recipe.

[seymour]

Not a recipe, but here's an awesome New York Times essay about Pelforth Brune: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012 ... -pelforth/

Great read, it vindicates any closet fans, and even hints at the recipe: base malt + caramel extract syrup

I haven't had Pelforth Brune (sadly), but I share a similar "guilty pleasure" for macro dark lager Negra Modelo, for instance.
Come to think of it, are we 100% sure Pelforth Brune is an ale, not a lager?

[lancsSteve]

Great read, it vindicates any closet fans, and even hints at the recipe: base malt + roasted malt + caramel extract syrup
...
Come to think of it, are we 100% sure Pelforth Brune is an ale, not a lager?

Hmmm:

the 6.5 percent alcohol-by-volume, bottom-fermented beer was created in 1937 to mimic the muscular English ales gaining admiration then, hence the marketing decision to use the Englishy sounding “forth.” That it is brewed using a combination of lightly kilned malt along with caramel malt — a liquid concentrate of roasted barley malt sugar considered a shortcut by some — rather than all-pure roasted malt, seems to be what moves the elitists to scoff.

Guess that's a lager then. ANd you could use dark malt extract, or just caramalt to get the flavour.

[seymour]

...Guess that's a lager then. ANd you could use dark malt extract, or just caramalt to get the flavour.

That's what I was guessing, too. Akin to all these inexpensive dark lagers available in the US: Killian's Irish Red, Heineken Dark, Negra Modelo, Dos Equis Amber, Michelob AmberBock, Shiner Bock, Leinenkugels Red, etc.

Most beer snobs look down their noses at the "American Dark Lager" style, but there's no denying they contain vastly more flavor than typical macro adjunct light lagers.

[zgoda]

There is much more to dark lager than you'd think. There are of course German dunkels from Bavaria, malty and heavy. Much lighter dunkels from Sachsen and lands further to the north. And from other countries of German brewing heritage, like Lithuania, Estonia or Poland, where there was no reinheitsgebot and they could brew from whatever they had at hand, like dried peas. And Czech tmave and cerne lagers, which resemble closely German dunkels and schwarzbiers but generally are less attenuated and have more body.

Oh, god, how long have I wait for lager brewing season?!

[IPA]

Many thanks for all of your replies. Originally brewed in 1921 in what the french call les Anneés Folles ( the Roaring Twenties ) and named after a foxtrot dance called in French le Pelican and made popular by the students in Lille. Originally called Pelican Forte ( strong pelican ) the pelican became the symbol of the brewery and later renamed Pelforth pronounced Pelfort. It is top fermented. This must be true because it is all on a special bottle the brewery has recently issued.

[seymour]

Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser. I just emailed the brewery's international media center with a clarifying question. I'll post any reply here.

[lancsSteve]

It is top fermented. This must be true because it is all on a special bottle the brewery has recently issued.

Now that's some TOP research and information sharing... Don;t trust anything you read on t'interwebs from abeer reviewer! Trust the person who has a bottle in front of him!

[IPA]

I think that I have cracked it! Yesterday I bottled the Pelforth and rather than wait six weeks for it to condition I reversed the process. Last night I opened a bottle of the real thing and put it in a tasting glass and left it to go flat overnight. This morning I compared it with a sample in the same sort of glass that I had saved when bottling. This morning I tasted the two and my taste buds could not detect any difference! If anyone is interested in the recipe send me a PM

[lancsSteve]

Go on RELEASE the recipe - it should be an open homebrew educational resource! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

[IPA]

Well here it is and it is very close to the original. I think the key ingredient is the Brewferm Special B and that is what gives it the unique taste. The sugar I used was Sainsbury's Light Soft Brown Fairtrade which is unlike most others in that it is almost white in colour. I cannot find an equivalent here in France so I will have to get some sent from England before I can brew it again. The recipe is for 19 litres


Pale Malt 7 EBC 3800 grams 74.9%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 475 grams 9.4%
Brewferm Special B 350 EBC 550 grams 10.8%
Sugar, Sainsbury's Light Soft Brown Fairtrade 0 EBC 250 grams 4.9%

Hop Variety Type Alpha Time grams Ratio
Northern Brewer Whole 8.2 % 90 mins 30 grams 75%
Styrian Goldings Whole 4.5 % 15 mins 10 grams 25%

Final Volume: 19 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 6.7% ABV
Total Liquor: 28.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.1 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 30.3059732527697 EBU
Colour: 81 EBC

I have just conducted a blind tasting with four neighbours and the results were.
Colour. The same
Aroma. Very little or no difference
Taste. Similiar but everyone could detect a slight difference.
Surprisingly all four prefered this recipe to the commercial version.
Well there you go. As they say on Strictly THE RESULTS ARE IN
Good luck to anyone tries it. Please let me have some feed back good or bad.
IPA

[jimp2003]

Which yeast did you use IPA?