Feedback on a Belgian recipe

[LarryC]

Hi all - I haven't been able to brew much lately and it looks like I'm going to have a chance to get one or two drew days in before the holidays so I'll have some homebrew for friends & family. One of the beers I want to brew is a revised recipe of a Belgian Golden Ale I brewed a couple years back. Remembering how that beer came out (and even checking some notes!) I wanted to make a few tweaks. The attached brew sheet is my version 2.0 recipe for this beer. the biggest changes were adding Biscuit Malt and revising the proportions of the other grains just a tad. I also upped the first hop addition from .5 oz to 1.0 oz.

I like a nice smooth Belgian with a good deal of the fruity characteristics from the yeast. Any feedback you have on the attached recipe would be appreciated. By the way, if there is an easier way to get a recipe out of BeerSmith and into the forum, let me know (I know I can attach a bsm file but I was thinking not everyone can ope it)!

Thanks

 

[helibrewer]

I would only say that the grain bill looks very busy for a Belgian Golden. I typically use all pilsner malt and candi syrup, with maybe a bit of Vienna. Look at the recipes on candisyrup.com

 

[LarryC]

I would agree but this recipe minus the biscuit malt and with a slight rebalanced of the percentages is one I've brewed before and it was well received by my homebrew swilling buddies. I thought adding the biscuit malt would give it a bit of a different flavor but I'm not sure of the amount I should go with. I read a number of articles where they say it should be around 10% of the grain bill (and I'm slightly under that). However, there is a very similar recipe in Gordon Strong's Brewing Better Beer and the biscuit malt is only 6 oz. (from The Kin Belgian Pale Ale).

Maybe I should just go for it and see how it comes out. I don't think I have ever had to throw away any of my homebrew!

 

[chickypad]

I'm with helibrewer on styles like this (in particular that seems like an awful lot of cara malts at 2.5 lbs and 24%) but if you have brewed a version before and liked it then I won't argue. Also it's a lower gravity recipe rather than a Golden strong so that makes a difference too. I tend to go about 5-7% biscuit when I use it. I have a Belgian pale ale recipe that I'm fond of that is in this OG range with all pilsner except 5% munich and 5% belgian biscuit malt.