cheesebach
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- Jun 27, 2014
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Just put together my all grain homebrew setup this past summer and recently had a problem with a Leffe Brune clone recipe that I purchased from AHS. The Leffe Brune is SWMBO's favorite beer, so it was a bit unfortunate that this was the only batch of the 4 I've done that hasn't turned out. I'm feeling a need to redeem myself this weekend and giving this recipe another shot, but I wanted to get some advice from the experts here for things I could try to improve the outcome this time. I'm willing to tweak the recipe a bit or try an entirely different one if someone here is familiar with the beer and has tried brewing anything similar to it.
Basically, the finished beer came out close to 1% higher ABV than expected from the recipe and had a very thin, dry mouth feel with no hint of sweetness - much different from the slightly sweet, malty, medium-full bodied character of the actual beer. The color was also lighter than I was expecting (Leffe Brune is a dark brown/mahogony). There was also a hot/alcohol taste.
Below are the basics of the recipe with my mash and fermentation details:
Grains:
11.5 lb Belgian Pilsner Malt
0.5 lb Aromatic Malt
0.25 lb Biscuit Malt
0.25 lb Munich Malt
0.25 lb Chocolate Malt
2 oz Honey Malt
Mash: 1.25 qt/lb, 60 minutes, started at 151F, ended at 150F after 60min.
Boil Additions:
0.5 lb Dark Candy Sugar
4 oz Malto Dextrin
1 oz Brewer's Gold (60 min)
0.5 oz Styrian Golding (15 min)
2 vials WLP 530 Belgian Abbey Ale
Target OG: 1.067
Actual OG: 1.065 (Think i was a couple points shy due to not tipping my mash tun to fully drain it)
Volume into fermenter: 5.25 gallons
Target FG: 1.017
Actual FG: 1.011
Pitched @69F, controlled temps to 72F for first 3 days, let rise to 75F for the remainder of primary fermentation (18 days).
Secondary fermentation: 4 weeks at 74F in glass carboy. I had more headspace than I was expecting (probably about a half gallon). I know this isn't ideal, but it was my first brew doing a secondary and I didn't realize that the carboy I had was 5.5 gallons to the top until later.
I'm pretty confident in my mash temps, since my digital and glass thermometer were matching at the start of the mash. This was my first time trying to use Bru'n water and RO water to build my water though. With this grain bill, I added about 0.5g/gallon of gypsum and 0.5g/gallon of CaCl2 and the grains should have put me at around 5.3 pH without the addition of any acid. I didn't have a pH meter to check this at the time though.
Some ideas I had were the following:
1) Reduce fermentation temps - The temps I used don't seem unusually high for the strain based on what I've read, but this might help to lower the attenuation?
2) Increase mash temp to 154F to decrease the fermentability of the wort. It seems like this shouldn't be necessary with the 4oz of malto dextrin that the recipe calls for though?
3) Skip secondary in carboy and condition at 70F in keg instead to prevent any oxidation due to the headspace.
Do these changes make sense? Or can anybody spot something else that may have gone wrong in my process that would cause this? Thanks in advance for any feedback
Basically, the finished beer came out close to 1% higher ABV than expected from the recipe and had a very thin, dry mouth feel with no hint of sweetness - much different from the slightly sweet, malty, medium-full bodied character of the actual beer. The color was also lighter than I was expecting (Leffe Brune is a dark brown/mahogony). There was also a hot/alcohol taste.
Below are the basics of the recipe with my mash and fermentation details:
Grains:
11.5 lb Belgian Pilsner Malt
0.5 lb Aromatic Malt
0.25 lb Biscuit Malt
0.25 lb Munich Malt
0.25 lb Chocolate Malt
2 oz Honey Malt
Mash: 1.25 qt/lb, 60 minutes, started at 151F, ended at 150F after 60min.
Boil Additions:
0.5 lb Dark Candy Sugar
4 oz Malto Dextrin
1 oz Brewer's Gold (60 min)
0.5 oz Styrian Golding (15 min)
2 vials WLP 530 Belgian Abbey Ale
Target OG: 1.067
Actual OG: 1.065 (Think i was a couple points shy due to not tipping my mash tun to fully drain it)
Volume into fermenter: 5.25 gallons
Target FG: 1.017
Actual FG: 1.011
Pitched @69F, controlled temps to 72F for first 3 days, let rise to 75F for the remainder of primary fermentation (18 days).
Secondary fermentation: 4 weeks at 74F in glass carboy. I had more headspace than I was expecting (probably about a half gallon). I know this isn't ideal, but it was my first brew doing a secondary and I didn't realize that the carboy I had was 5.5 gallons to the top until later.
I'm pretty confident in my mash temps, since my digital and glass thermometer were matching at the start of the mash. This was my first time trying to use Bru'n water and RO water to build my water though. With this grain bill, I added about 0.5g/gallon of gypsum and 0.5g/gallon of CaCl2 and the grains should have put me at around 5.3 pH without the addition of any acid. I didn't have a pH meter to check this at the time though.
Some ideas I had were the following:
1) Reduce fermentation temps - The temps I used don't seem unusually high for the strain based on what I've read, but this might help to lower the attenuation?
2) Increase mash temp to 154F to decrease the fermentability of the wort. It seems like this shouldn't be necessary with the 4oz of malto dextrin that the recipe calls for though?
3) Skip secondary in carboy and condition at 70F in keg instead to prevent any oxidation due to the headspace.
Do these changes make sense? Or can anybody spot something else that may have gone wrong in my process that would cause this? Thanks in advance for any feedback