CS8 - Impe Belgian Pale Ale

[Tilt]

A Belgian Pale Ale as my contribution this time 'round.

My first foray into Belgian yeasts after the revelation I had while drinking an La'Chouffe a wee while ago.

This recipe is heavily inspired by the Yeastie Boys Plan K which I didn't get to try when it was around  but looked a great way to build up the yeast for a crack at a Golden Strong. 

I've taken advantage of a bit of time to keep this cool for a while in secondary so it'll only go into the bottles this weekend (29/4).  If you can I'd be giving this a couple more weeks to carb properly and to let the esters/phenols meld.

Impe Pale

OG 1047  FG 1007  ABV 5.1%

Colour 11 SRM

Bitterness 25 IBU

Recipe

70.5% Wey Pils

22%  Bairds Golden Promise

5.5% Caramunich II

1.3% Caraaroma

0.7% Carafa Special II

14.7 IBU Pacific Jade @ 60

7.3 IBU Motueka @ 20

3.2 Motueka @ 5

Wyeast 3522 (Ardennes) from a 1.5L starter using a rising temp fermentation profile - 18-22 degrees over 7 days.

[Martin Bridges]

This is number 4, yes? Seems to make sense. So here we go:

Pours a nice clear amber. With some light behind it almost has a rosey tint to it. Beautiful tight head which lasts and lasts and lasts. Obviously a good clean beer. Well carbonated.

Phenolics on the nose, so this is definitely Belgian. Some malt sweetness comes through later on.

Nice & dry - some attempts at Belgian beers can come across a bit sweet but not this one. Clean and refreshing, nicely balanced. Phenolics are there but not overpowering. A good quality drinking beer. I'd be happy to have this on tap. My memory of Plan K is a bit fuzzy (think it was a bit chewier than this) but I do like this style. Only change I'd make is to look for a little extra body.

Nice work mate.

[Tilt]

Thanks Martin, I agree with you on the body of this one - I'd mash it warmer without changing the grist next time around.  This was 65 at mash in and it lost a degree over the hour,  66 or 67 would probably be better.

[John H]

Like Martin said...

A great first Belgian (or 2nd, 3rd etc etc)- this case swap has made me want to try brewing one too.

Aside from the thin body - awesome beer!!!

[Adrian Tayler]

Yeah, as above... but dang bro, this is a fine drop.... It hard;y touched the sides.. I could chug away for months on this brew.. thanks for the great contribution...

[Andrew]

Just sitting down to this now and reading the other comments I agree to a certain extent with most of them, getting the dryness, phenolics & almost spicy flavours. Looks like a great beer the only thing I,m finding is quite alot of Ethyl Acetate, which smells like airplane glue. In a pint glass I don't get it too bad but I always put some in a little nosing glass to get all the aromas and you can really smell it in there

I think you could be onto something but like your saying you could up the mash temp a but and either change the yeast out for something a little cleaner (thats only my personal taste) or control the fermentation temp down a bit to get rid of the ethyl acetate. You can get it from over or under pitching as well but temp is the most common offender. Other than the "airplane glue" I think you could be onto a good beer here, I'm using the Pacific Jade:Motueka combo on a beer this weekend so this will give me something to go off.

[Tilt]

Good comments Andrew - thanks for the honest feedback.  Using the nosing glass to concentrate aromas sounds like a damn good technique to evaluate and pinpoint flaws.  I'm not sure I get glue smells but some volatiles were there in the ferment fridge in the second (higher temp) half of the ferment.  I built up a 6 month old smackpack two steps to a 2L starter for this beer so don't think  I would have got the pitching rate out by far - so temp is the most likely responsible variable.  This went into bottles about 3 weeks ago and I've got a few of these bottles stored away so I'm interested to find out if this character changes over time.  Cheers

[Matt Smith]

Poured a nice bright ruby colour, I could see my fingers nice and clear on the other side of my big Duvel glass. Did you use any finings in this ?

The esters and phenols are balanced really nicely and are not too overbearing for a delicate beer like this. I need to expand my flavour vocabulary, but what I can describe is a mild spiciness, followed by a touch of bubblegum in the background. Fermentation seems pretty clean, I couldn't pick up any off flavours. Belgian beers are tricky I find as the phenols and esters can be so bold I think it can be hard to pick what should be there and what shouldn't.

I liked the dryness, I didn't find it to be too thin. If you were to up the final gravity next time, personally I would also bump up the IBU to about 30, but that's just me.

Overall a really pleasant sessionable belgian beer. Thanks !

[Tilt]

Thanks Matt - if there was any balance in this one its purely down to inexperience, blind luck and using the Plan K recipe as a base  - so all credit is due elsewhere!  In an attempt to get this looking nice for the CS this was cold crashed for 5 days in the primary, racked with gelatine finings to a secondary and then cold conditoned for another 10 days prior to bottling.  This is the second time I've used that regime and I'm pretty happy how clear it turned out compared with my usual "dam water" looking beers!

[Stu H]

Enjoying this tonight....

Pretty solid white, thick head with some lacing. Poured deep amber, a little cloudy.

Nice bubblegum + spicy notes in the nose.

For me I enjoyed the fact this beer isn't that fat - I'm personally not into really big belgian beers.

I don't know if there's much more to say that hasn't already been said already, but yum, thanks dude!

[Dan]

This one went down very nicely.

Copper/brown colour & crystal clear.

Nice carb.

Pepper spicyness.

A very sessionable belgian ale for sure.

I wish I had more... a looot more!!

Cheers mate.

[SR]

so we shared this beer with our southern homebrewers club (which translates to a keen bunch of homebrewers who come to our house the first monday of each month and share each others bevvies...)... and this is what we got:

Creamy head

Clear

Nice (i just recorded all the comments)

Mild phenolic

Light body (which was nice too)

Dry finish

Banana (sniffed a ripe banana to check)

Spicy (debate over hoppy spiciness, or clovey type spiciness)

Crystal malt sweetness

No major flaws

Easy drinking for a belgian

Overall, everyone enjoyed it.  Thanks Tilt!