Tuesday, April 12, 2016

My First Mini-mash - Leffe Brune!

I've had enough of average beer, so it's time to  step it up!

For those unfamiliar with the finer points of home brewing, mashing is the process of releasing the grain starches into fermentable sugars. Mini-mashing involves using a combination of grain and already malted extracts, and boiling hops for different lengths according to desired bitterness and aroma. 

So I found this little recipe for a Leffe Blonde which looked simple enough, and is a fantastic beer to drink, so why not copy it? The only problem was, the Hop & Grain did not have the clear Belgian candi sugar used it the blonde, only the dark Belgian candi sugar. So Blonde it ain't, and never will be! But that's okay, Leffe Brune is a fine beer in its own right.

The recipe included;
  • 3kg Liquid Light Malt Extract
  • 500g Light Dried Malt
  • 250g Caramunich Grain
  • 500g Belgian Clear Candi Sugar
  • 30g Hallertau Hops Pellets (60 min boil)
  • 20g Saaz Hops Pellets (10 min boil)
  • T58 Yeast (White Labs Trappist Ale Yeast-optional)
 As these things go, sometimes you can't get precisely the ingredients, so as well as the candi sugar, they didn't have the liquid yeast, so i went for the Lallemand Abbaye powdered yeast, and damned well forgot the 500g light dried malt! Fortunately i had about 350g of liquid malt at home, which i used instead.



So everything went according to plan, until the very end when, when trying to fill the fermenter with the freshly brewed wort, the wife started spraying some anti-arthritis spray that smelt like Dencorub, so if the beer has any hint of that, at least i'll know who to blame. 

To make things worse, 36 hours after brewing, the wort had still not commenced fermenting. Fortunately, however, this evening fermenting had commenced, so now just a 3 month wait to find out if it's any good! I am confident though, as a preliminary taste revealed a rich, flavoured brew, so just two months to confirm! (as time goes by, I will reduce that time until it's carbonated in the bottle. 3 months is just a guide, to be honest. How convenient!)

Finally, i surveyed my growing crates of beer, and have nearly 20 cases of beer, so I can afford to slow down the production, or I could just drink it faster. Decisions, decisions!!