Belgian Blond Ale Revvy's Belgian Blonde (Leffe Clone)

stever1000 said:

Made a mistake and misread the recipe, leaving out the last 13oz of pilsner (9lb instead of 9lb 13oz) oops...

used 1 lb of sugar to help compensate

OG:15 brix/1.064 SG

Pitched Danstar Abbaye belgian ale yeast

Excited to try this out

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Did the exact same thing

Crohnnie said:

Did the exact same thing

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What temperature schedule are you going with?

stever1000 said:

What temperature schedule are you going with?

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It's about 63 F in my house so that's what it's going at

This is quickly becoming my belgian "breeder" beer, 3 batches down, pitching 1 vial of yeast, letting it do it's thing, bottle and pitch a nice big tripel or quad on the washed cake.

Tastes good and easy to do.

Crohnnie said:

It's about 63 F in my house so that's what it's going at

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I would love to hear the results when you taste it!

I'm sitting at 66F right now

Kharnynb said:

This is quickly becoming my belgian "breeder" beer, 3 batches down, pitching 1 vial of yeast, letting it do it's thing, bottle and pitch a nice big tripel or quad on the washed cake.

Tastes good and easy to do.

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This is my exact plan - going to brew a tripel next!

stever1000 said:

I would love to hear the results when you taste it!

I'm sitting at 66F right now

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I'll post results. Should be pretty good, no?

Crohnnie said:

I'll post results. Should be pretty good, no?

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Yes, I couldn't find a comprehensive report on the temperature and its effect on the flavour for this yeast, but I did read it does well cool

stever1000 said:

Yes, I couldn't find a comprehensive report on the temperature and its effect on the flavour for this yeast, but I did read it does well cool

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Might try bottling today. Did you rack yours yet?

I think I'm going to rack 2.5gallons onto some raspberries and keg the other 2.5gallons to experiment a bit with the blonde as a base. But I probably won't do that until next week or later due to being busy with work

Let me know how it tastes!

Finished out at 1.01 with minor airlock activity. If I bottle it at 1.01 without priming there should be enough residual sugar to carbonate right? Added a small amount of boiled sugar just in case. Tastes pretty good without carbonation even. Finished out to around 7.6 or so

Crohnnie said:

Finished out at 1.01 with minor airlock activity. If I bottle it at 1.01 without priming there should be enough residual sugar to carbonate right? Added a small amount of boiled sugar just in case. Tastes pretty good without carbonation even. Finished out to around 7.6 or so

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1.010 seems a little on the dry side for this beer but it should taste fine. I have never bottled without priming sugar of some kind. I believe there are ways of doing that but I'm not sure any are practical for the homebrewer. The question at bottling time is usually whether there is adequate yeast in suspension to adequately carbonate. That is more a function of how long the beer has been sitting post fermentation and whether it was racked, cold crashed, etc. There are plenty of priming calculators online to confirm whether you've added adequate sugar.

Wasn't carbonated much but managed to drink around 4 already. Side by side comparison reveals leffe is carbonated. And mine is not carbonated.

Crohnnie said:

Wasn't carbonated much but managed to drink around 4 already. Side by side comparison reveals leffe is carbonated. And mine is not carbonated.

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Did you do a triangle test? I refuse to believe you until I see empirical evidence. ;-)

trav77 said:

Did you do a triangle test? I refuse to believe you until I see empirical evidence. ;-)

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I'm not sure what that is but it sounds like it involves drinking.
Further tests reveal that it is still not carbonated. I may force carb with a soda stream, drinking flat beer is kind of sad

Crohnnie said:

I'm not sure what that is but it sounds like it involves drinking.

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Ah... Just taking a poke at the people who don't believe anything unless Brulosophy has done a statistical analysis on it.

Not to derail... So I have a keg of this stuff on tap right now and it's drinking very nicely (it's carbonated) around 4 weeks in the keg.

I have a different issue: brewed this recipe 2.5 weeks ago: all seemed well; mashed at 156, came away with 5.75 gal of cooled O2genated wort at 1.065 and pitched a decent size starter of wlp530... after a vigorous blowoff fermentation 1 week in it was at 1.020 and it's barely creeped along to 1.019 since. I think I should have added the sugar after high krausen... hoping that another week or so with a fermwrap at 73deg will dry it out a little more. Any thoughts?

Mine took a long time to tick down to 1.010 although I underpitched due to life getting in the way of my starter step up from expired yeast. Same thing though. Took off like a rocket and got down to 1.025 then very slow to finish.

Well 3 weeks in the fermenter, the beer has cleared but it still sits at 1.020. Quite sweet as a hydro sample but maybe drinkable after force carbing. I think the yeast is done... perhaps I didn't pitch enough yeast - the white labs pack was quite old and it took 3 full days for my starter to bloom.

It's so strong guys

Revvy said:

I've done it several times over the years with that yeast. It's a good handy dry yeast for it. It's pretty much been my goto yeast on it for the last few batches, since no starter/prep is required for it.

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Glad to see you are still active with this thread Revy.
Have been brewing 3 years and now happily using the GF. Looked over your recipe many times in the past and since I like Leffe, have scaled it to 3 gal and finally have it in the line-up. People like you who have credibly done the hard work of refining a clone and then sharing it are very much appreciated by me.
Love your disclaimer, too!

I want to rack 2.5gallons onto some raspberries (frozen right now)

I have read some comments to leave in secondary for "X" days...this would allow the yeast to ferment the raspberry sugars

I have also read some comments to cold crash and then let raspberries sit in the cold beer for "X" days. This would just infuse the flavour without fermentation

What would work best for this recipe?

you add sugars in any form, it has to ferment out before you can bottle, otherwise you are scraping beer and glass shards out of the walls.

... What

Sorry I forgot to mention I will be kegging
i don't want to add anymore alcohol so I think I will add them to the cold keg for a week then remove them (in a paint strainer)

My guess is you're going to get a bit more raspberry flavor with the higher temp. I did a raspberry saison by racking the 5 gal saison onto a 2lb bag of frozen raspberries. You want to break the berries up a bit so the membranes release the juice. I left mine for a week in secondary and it worked great. Then again if you get the juice in there cold you're going to have raspberry flavor anyway.

stever1000 said:

I want to rack 2.5gallons onto some raspberries (frozen right now)

I have read some comments to leave in secondary for "X" days...this would allow the yeast to ferment the raspberry sugars

I have also read some comments to cold crash and then let raspberries sit in the cold beer for "X" days. This would just infuse the flavour without fermentation

What would work best for this recipe?

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Perfect time to build a waterfilter randall.



I did it with thie recipe and mesquite smoked pineapple and it was amazing.

Barring that, if I was kegging I would just put the fruit in a mesh bag and hang it inside the keg.

8 days since pitch. 1.088 - 1.012 or 7.09% ABV, subject to confirmation with hydrometer, not my Tilt. I'll be transferring to clean kegs later today and crashing I think. I split this into 5 gal with M27 Mangrove Jack (replaced by M47?) Belgian Abbey yeast and 5 gal with Danstar Abbey yeast. I basically let them ferment at the temp they wanted; high 70's, low 80's. Happy as clams. I'll compare the final gravities and tastes of both yeasts and report.

Revvy said:

Perfect time to build a waterfilter randall.

I did it with thie recipe and mesquite smoked pineapple and it was amazing.

Barring that, if I was kegging I would just put the fruit in a mesh bag and hang it inside the keg.

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Interesting, I will have to look more into what that is exactly

stever1000 said:

Interesting, I will have to look more into what that is exactly

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Here's info.

Revvy said:

Here's info.

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Thanks for the recipe, it's absolutely excellent. Leffe is my favorite beer, and making it by the gallon makes me a happy camper.

Revvy said:

Here's info.

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Wow that is super cool. I guess my only concerned is the short contact time (1 min pour?) vs 7 days in the keg?

stever1000 said:

Wow that is super cool. I guess my only concerned is the short contact time (1 min pour?) vs 7 days in the keg?

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For fruit a fresh hop burst of flavor it's pretty intense and fresher than if you left it in the keg. Plus you don't have to split your batch up- you just fruit up what you want, when you want it.

It's 6 of one half dozen of the other.

Revvy said:

For fruit a fresh hop burst of flavor it's pretty intense and fresher than if you left it in the keg. Plus you don't have to split your batch up- you just fruit up what you want, when you want it.

It's 6 of one half dozen of the other.

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Very true. I won't have time to build one immediately (those housings are expensive or hard to come by here) but I will order the parts for the next batch

The uncarbonated tastes/numbers are in....wow. With Lallemand Danstar Abbaye yeast, the FG was 1.011 and the Belgian funky taste finished with a nice fruitiness. The M27 Mangrove Jack ended at an incredible 1.002 and was, understandably, much drier and a bit 'hot'. Both of these fermented the same amount of time at the same temperatures. Started at 1.066. This looks like 7.2% and 8.4% ABV respectively. 83% and 97% attenuation respectively. WOW..... M27 is a BEAST.

I also learned that my TILT values are way off....Good for seeing when fermentation is done, but poor on the absolute levels. Need to figure out if I've got a calibration issue or if it is a limitation of the product.

I have put 30 lbs on these guys as they cold crash, so carbonation will be pretty quick. More tasting notes to follow.

I built a pump driven carbonator are carbed these guys up today. AWESOME!! Both very drinkable. The difference in taste between the two of them has diminished other than the very noticeable fruity finish with the Danstar. The M27 is drier, more alcoholic and less complex in its flavors. It might make a great base for dry hopping and going for a Belgian IPA recipe... hummmm

kegged 2.5 gallons with priming sugar to naturally carb (kegerator is full)
kegged the other 2.X gallons with 2lbs raspberries (in the fridge)

stever1000 said:

kegged 2.5 gallons with priming sugar to naturally carb (kegerator is full)
kegged the other 2.X gallons with 2lbs raspberries (in the fridge)

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Lemme know how the naturally carbed version (well both actually!) comes out, I can't recall if I've ever done it like that in a keg for this recipe- I know I've done it for the Kentucky Common- and used CBC-1 Cask and bottling yeast for fun, and it was awesome, but not sure if I've played around with nat carbing this one. :rockin:

Revvy said:

Lemme know how the naturally carbed version (well both actually!) comes out, I can't recall if I've ever done it like that in a keg for this recipe- I know I've done it for the Kentucky Common- and used CBC-1 Cask and bottling yeast for fun, and it was awesome, but not sure if I've played around with nat carbing this one. :rockin:

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I will let you know for sure

After a little attenuation issue with 530, thrilled to have this on tap again! This time pretty well nailed the color and taste of Leffe. Clarity not quite up to Leffe out of the bottle, but it's only been kegged a week. I should always keep this one in the keezer!