Tellen Du

[leedspointbrew]

This beer, Tellen Du (Black Harp in Breton), is a buckwheat lager that's brewed by Brasserie Lancelot. I drank it in Paris 22 years ago and loved it.
In my infinite (lack of) wisdom, I've decided to try reverse-engineering it. I have malted buckwheat (4 lbs), and have been able to ascertain that roasted barley is another important component of the beer, but that's it.
This is the breakdown I'm thinking :

2 lbs malted buckwheat
4 lbs Maris Otter
.25 lbs roasted barley
.25 lbs Gambrinus Honey Malt
.6 oz Magnum @ 60
.75 oz EKG @ 15
Novalager yeast

If anyone is sufficiently interested in this project to comment, I would appreciate it.
Thanks.

 

[AlexKay]

What’s the gelatinization temperature for buckwheat? I seem to remember it being very high (though maybe that was sorghum), so you might need a cereal mash even though it’s malted.

 

[ba-brewer]

Dont know anything about the beer, but the webpage mentions coffee and chocolate notes (flavors?) and looks quite dark so maybe some chocolate malt

 

[leedspointbrew]

Dont know anything about the beer, but the webpage mentions coffee and chocolate notes (flavors?) and looks quite dark so maybe some chocolate malt

You're right. Going to substitute .25 lbs chocolate malt for the Gambrinus Honey. Thanks.

 

[tracer bullet]

No idea from me either but sounds interesting, looked it up, found an article elsewhere that might be of use so I'll link it in case you haven't seen it.

https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/heOJLe8Zkp/

 

[Albionwood]

I too have had Telenn Du and tried to homebrew something like it, but failed pretty spectacularly - the beer didn't ferment well at all, probably because I didn't malt the buckwheat and I might not have cereal mashed it either (it does have a high gelatinization temperature, so you need to cereal mash it before mashing-in with the barley). I ended up pitching a wild culture and it turned into a pretty nice sour with some interesting complexity, a wildly different beer than I was aiming for!

I think your grain bill (revised with Chocolate malt in lieu of the Honey malt) is on the right track, though Lancelot more likely uses a French or Belgian malt, so the MO might be too flavorful. On the other hand I love the taste of MO so why not? I sure wouldn't use both MO and Honey malt together though - if you switched to a Belgian or French 2-row then maybe put in a little honey malt.
One other option to consider is replacing the Black Roasted with a debittered black malt like Blackprinz or Carafa III so you can use more and get that black color. Using your numbers I get SRM of less than 30.
You didn't specify a batch size but when I plug in your numbers for a five-gallon batch I get a pretty low OG. What are you aiming for?

I don't remember much hop character so restraint is appropriate there. Lancelot also makes a beer that I am much more interested in - Cervoise - a gruit beer with several botanicals (including hops). I haven't found enough information to even try cloning it. I thought it was a much more enjoyable beer than Telenn Du.

 

[leedspointbrew]

I too have had Telenn Du and tried to homebrew something like it, but failed pretty spectacularly - the beer didn't ferment well at all, probably because I didn't malt the buckwheat and I might not have cereal mashed it either (it does have a high gelatinization temperature, so you need to cereal mash it before mashing-in with the barley). I ended up pitching a wild culture and it turned into a pretty nice sour with some interesting complexity, a wildly different beer than I was aiming for!

I think your grain bill (revised with Chocolate malt in lieu of the Honey malt) is on the right track, though Lancelot more likely uses a French or Belgian malt, so the MO might be too flavorful. On the other hand I love the taste of MO so why not? I sure wouldn't use both MO and Honey malt together though - if you switched to a Belgian or French 2-row then maybe put in a little honey malt.
One other option to consider is replacing the Black Roasted with a debittered black malt like Blackprinz or Carafa III so you can use more and get that black color. Using your numbers I get SRM of less than 30.
You didn't specify a batch size but when I plug in your numbers for a five-gallon batch I get a pretty low OG. What are you aiming for?

I don't remember much hop character so restraint is appropriate there. Lancelot also makes a beer that I am much more interested in - Cervoise - a gruit beer with several botanicals (including hops). I haven't found enough information to even try cloning it. I thought it was a much more enjoyable beer than Telenn Du.

I have 4 lbs pale Buckwheat malt - should already be torrified, but will cereal mash anyway.
Will probably add .25 lbs debittered Carafa to darken the 4 gal batch. Not too concerned with numbers at this point - more interested in executing something similar to what I remember drinking. Depending on how this test run goes, I can tweak the next batch.

 

[Albionwood]

Good plan. I will eagerly await a report. Pretty hard to clone a beer you drank 22 years ago! I had some in Breizh in 2015 and again in 2019. Great craft-beer scene in Brittany on 2019, lots of little breweries but mostly making the same three styles of beer. Lancelot stood out with the Cervoise and Telenn Du.

I want to get back to working with buckwheat and see if I can figure it out; a buckwheat grisette is high on my list of beers for this summer.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Question for Albionwood and AlexKay; what are your thoughts on this post that I found :

 

[AlexKay]

Question for Albionwood and AlexKay; what are your thoughts on this post that I found :

View attachment 824442

In general I'd defer to the folks on the GF forum, who have probably actually used this stuff, while I'm just sitting here speculating.

Since you're not going gluten-free and the buckwheat is there for taste, you've got plenty of enzymes from the Maris Otter. I would think this gives you the freedom to just boil the buckwheat and not worry about the extra trouble of decoction mashing. And unless you pull all of the thick mash to boil (this is not the kind of decoction I'm familiar with), anything held back will still have ungelatinized starch.

I've tried a 100% malted corn grist, and I did do a quadruple decoction. It did not turn out well, I suspect because even that didn't gelatinize all of the starch.

 

[Albionwood]

I agree with AlexKay and would boil the buckwheat before adding it to the mash. The barley malt should have enough diastatic power to convert the starches from the buckwheat. I think I would aim for a fairly low-temp mash though, and possibly even do a step-mash (54C-63C-67C or thereabouts) to improve efficiency and fermentability, especially if using a lager yeast.
That thread Quercus found is really helpful but is all about GF mashing with millet, which has far less diastatic power than barley, so the 25% restriction doesn't apply here. A quick calculation indicates this bill should have about 86 degrees Lintner and should therefore convert just fine in an infusion mash - once the buckwheat starches are solubilized that is!

 

[Albionwood]

This paper has a lot of detailed scientific information about buckwheat mashes, using both malted and unmalted buckwheat. I'm still chewing through it but one thing that jumps out is malted buckwheat basically doesn't self-convert so they add enzymes to the mash. Also the gelatinization temperature for malted buckwheat is around 67C (152F) so maybe it doesn't have to be boiled after all, but I think it still needs to be heated up separately before adding to the barley mash to get those starches solubilized.
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/4/2199
Edit: Having gone a little further down the rabbit hole, the gelatinization is not a simple matter. While it may begin to gelatinize around 67C, to get it completed requires temps in the range of 71 to 88C - a pretty wide range. So maybe we don't need to boil it, but it does need to get pretty hot to ensure gelatinization.
Also there are several studies comparing malted vs unmalted buckwheat in mashing and brewing, generally concluding you don't really gain anything by malting it. Some interesting results from sensory analysis of different blending proportions, concluding that a 100% unmalted buckwheat beer is as good as one made with only 30% malted buckwheat and 70% barley malt.
Also also, extract efficiency of buckwheat is around 75% that of barley malt, so we need to take that into account with recipe design. And furthermore the wort is less fermentable so you end up with some residual sweetness (with lager yeast). This is consistent with my memory of Telenn Du.

 

[leedspointbrew]

So I'm planning to brew the reverse-engineered Tellen Faux buckwheat "lager" Sunday. Going to cereal mash the buckwheat at around 180, and then keep the overall mash temps high - but not too high (155 - 160ish) - for better body, since I'm using Lutra yeast. .6 oz Magnum @ 60 for bittering, .6 oz Crystal @ 30 for flavor. Per recommendations, honey malt was removed from original recipe, debittered Carafa added. Wish me luck!

 

[Albionwood]

So I'm planning to brew the reverse-engineered Tellen Faux buckwheat "lager" Sunday. Going to cereal mash the buckwheat at around 180, and then keep the overall mash temps high - but not too high (155 - 160ish) - for better body, since I'm using Lutra yeast. .6 oz Magnum @ 60 for bittering, .6 oz Crystal @ 30 for flavor. Per recommendations, honey malt was removed from original recipe, debittered Carafa added. Wish me luck!

Good luck!
And let us know how it goes.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Good luck!
And let us know how it goes.

Will do. If nothing else, I think it's going to prove interesting.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Good luck!
And let us know how it goes.

Here goes! Cereal mash was tough - stirred almost constantly, still a crust on the bottom of the kettle. Incorporated it into the mash and was off to the races; took a small sample at the end before pitching, didn't taste bad at all.

 

[leedspointbrew]

The faux Du turned out ink black, crystal clear, and from the small sample I tried, pretty tasty. More like a typical English porter than the Tellen Du I barely remember. 3 lbs of buckwheat next time instead of 2 / 2 lbs of MO instead of 3.
I'd rate it a partial success.

 

[Albionwood]

Clearly we need to meet in Brittany to reacquaint ourselves with the original!

 

[leedspointbrew]

Clearly we need to meet in Brittany to reacquaint ourselves with the original!

Agreed!