An experiment in the brewhouse

I have a bit of a love for the taste and aroma of a well brewed hoppy pale ale.

I also just love the look of a clear sparkling Pilsner. So, if I'm drinking with my eyes first , then my nose and finally my palate, I want a sparkling golden to clear ale with hoppy aroma followed by a smooth tasting or even an interesting or bitter note.

So a nice hoppy ale recipe using pilsner malt gives me the colour and the hop character that I'm after, and playing around with specialty malts, yeasts and water chemistry gives me the balance. An Xpa recipe makes sense and I've made a few over the past 12 months, and found if I use a high percentage Pilsner or Vienna as my base malt it will give me a light and golden almost lager looking Ale. It is now a regular on my home tap.

I have the ability to brew 60 litres in my setup but seldom want that much of the same beer for home, or seldom have the fermenter capacity to handle that much.

Recently I made a batch and popped 20 L in a fermenter and the rest in a few plastic drums as fresh wort kits so i could play around with different dry hop versions later.

I've also recently gone down the Belgian style rabbit hole and brewed a beast to satisfy that need. See last months 9% Belgian Trippel blog.

A recent stock take shows me that my ale yeasts are selling well but my specialty yeasts are not. Having a spare Xpa fresh wort kit lying around and an excess of cool and interesting yeasts got me thinkin. A Belgian abbey style yeast in an extra pale ale, that has been whirlpool hopped with Citra and Centennial . Sounds crazy, but it just might work.

Be 256 is a Safale yeast that is high attenuating, fast fermenting and recommended for an Abbey style beer. It has high ester production and an ability to ferment high alcohol wort . The yeast is definitely not "clean" neutral tasting, the high ester production gives it that familiar spicy "Belgiany" aroma and taste which happens, in this case, to mix well with the citrusy hops.

The fact that this yeast will ferment up to 11% Abv, encouraged me to pop in a bit extra dextrose to crank up my 5.5% kit, just to be respectful to the Belgians.

Completely changed the beer. Ended up with a 7% Xpa based hoppy Belgian style ale.,,,, I suppose you could call it a New age Dubbel.

This beer wouldn't fit any traditional style guidelines but who cares about guidelines ?. Its a nice gentle way to lead one down a different path, out of the square and towards a new beersperience, in fact its a cracker and will be regular brew for a while, or until another sparkly thing grabs my attention.

Brew Love