Brewing biere de garde

[Snarf1]

I'd been thinking about starting a thread and since TheMurdawg asked about it elsewhere, I figured why not.

Does anyone else like to brew biere de garde? I really enjoy the style, both for it's breadth and vagueness. If you're interested in French Farmhouse ales (or Belgian for that matter) and don't own Farmhouse Ales by Markowski, scroll up to the Amazon link and buy that **** now.

I prefer my BdG to taste French. I love Bon Chien and it might be a BdG in the pseudohistorical sense, but it doesn't fit the bill for what I think of as the style. I would assume Biere de Norma is much the same categorically, not that I've had it. Wink wink. Maybe biere de garde is like porn, you know it when you see it, but to me it's hard to put a mixed ferment beer into this style. It's something I'd like to play around with more, but the beer has to retain malt character and that's a challenge once you add bacteria and brettanomyces.

Blonde to brown, I don't think the color is important, but the yeast, malt and hop choices are. I don't think you should brew a BdG without either culturing yeast from a French bottle or using WLP072. I really like WLP072, to me it tastes like Saint-Sylvestre, although it's reputedly Jenlain, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out the two breweries share yeast. If anyone is having luck using Kolsch yeast or lager yeast at an elevated temp, please share.

For hops I've been using older American stuff: Willamette, Sterling, Crystal, etc because that's what I've had on hand and I've been trying to use some of the earlier USDA stuff both because of price and 'Murica instead of noble hops. However, Strisselspalt has a je nes se qu,a if you will, that other hops lack.

TheMurdawg asked about a recipe, I think a characterful base malt and keeping specialty malts appropriate and under 10% is good, as well as using the right sugar, particularly in bigger examples. I always use Riverbend for my base malt because I'm ructic as ****. Their Heritage malt is Vienna-ish colorwise and inbetween Vienna and light Munich for flavor, but it's floor malted 6 row Thoroughbred barley and just tastes different than any of the major brand stuff. I think the FrancoBelge is best from the more available choices. I'd don't have experience with the more kilned base malts, but the pilsner has a 'graininess' to it for lack of a better word that I think lends itself to the style.

For a 1.052 beer I'm expecting to finish at 1.008 I went with 11lbs base, .5 lb Weyermann CaraBelge, .5 lb Gambrinus Honey Malt, .25 lb raw Golden Naked Oats, and .5 lb turbinado with Willamette at 60 for 15 IBU and 15 for 5 IBU. That was the plan, but I had a SNAFU and lost some first runnings so I threw in some DME and doubled the sugar and hit 1.056. Oh well. Will probably brew again this weekened so i have more time to lager the second batch as my pipeline is llllloooowww.

I can ramble a lot more about this and other things under this guise so feel free to chime in or not.

 

[rcubed1]

BN's Brewing With Style on BdG was interesting to listen to for Jamil's thoughts on the style.

 

[Snarf1]

BN's Brewing With Style on BdG was interesting to listen to for Jamil's thoughts on the style.

 

[SirDickButts]

i never brewed a biere de garde and always wanted to try my hand at it.
i know awinkro made a bomb ass biere de garde for Saint Arnolds icon series.
hopefully he chimes in and give some pointers!

 

[awinkro]

i never brewed a biere de garde and always wanted to try my hand at it.
i know awinkro made a bomb ass biere de garde for Saint Arnolds icon series.
hopefully he chimes in and give some pointers!

We used Biere de Noel as the inspiration for our de garde. Essentially a higher gravity version. Markowski's book has been a huge inspiration on me. We went through several test brews at Saint Arnold. I used traditional malt and hop bill as well as using traditional kolsch and lager yeasts. In the end we used a saison/farmhouse strain to add some yeast complexity. Merged the French and Belgian farmhouse styles. It should be said Bon Chien is odd one in the de Garde style. Not many "traditional" de gardes are 11% and as funky as bon chien.

 

[awinkro]

We used Biere de Noel as the inspiration for our de garde. Essentially a higher gravity version. Markowski's book has been a huge inspiration on me. We went through several test brews at Saint Arnold. I used traditional malt and hop bill as well as using traditional kolsch and lager yeasts. In the end we used a saison/farmhouse strain to add some yeast complexity. Merged the French and Belgian farmhouse styles. It should be said Bon Chien is odd one in the de Garde style. Not many "traditional" de gardes are 11% and as funky as bon chien.

I forgot to add that Bon Chien is delicious, of course. Most Belgian brewers I've met don't think about defining a style/guidelines like American do. Jean-Marie Rock, formerly of Orval, mentioned Orval is simply that, "Orval." Not a pale ale, farmhouse, amber...whatever. It's Orval.

 

[ShawDeuce221]

I enjoy Bon Chien and Norma so much that I brewed a "BdG" that would be similar-ish to one of them. I wanted deep/dark red, I wanted sour and funky, and I wanted oaky (not saying that either is oaky, I just wanted oak). I brewed it at a friends lake house that we have an annual get together at and kinda wanted to stay away from it since I tend to try beers more than I should. My recipe either came from Jamil or Farmhouse Ales but then modified for the long haul.

12# Belgian Pils
3# Munich I
1# Flaked oats
12oz Caravienne
2oz Black Malt

1.5 oz 4.5%AA Fuggle

Funny that TNGabe mentioned all yeast the I put into this
WLP072 primary
After 2 days of very active fermentation added dregs from 2 years of Bon Chien and B3(?) Norma
2 months later I transferred into a smaller carboy with 2oz oak

I would mention the OG but....we got drunk

Didn't take notes on temps for mash but I remember walking away (like a putz) after the batch sparge was going into the kettle and it finished about a 1/2" from the rim, that was fun to carry outside. This brew day was June 2014, just bottled a month or so ago and its nowhere near carbed. I might be pulling the caps and adding fresh yeast soon, very irritating.

Here's the sample I pulled this past May (11 months old)