I was thinking the same thing. I have been using almost 6% of each Munich and Wheat rather than a Candi sugar and carapils. I don't have Dingman's Carapils readily available, but it looks like maybe it has an SRM of 8? I am generally not bothered by color much, but I think it could use some. Regarding the yeast, I would love to know the origins of the original. I was drawn to 1762 originally, but I think it is not expressive enough.
bisonbrew.com
WLP515 is an Urquell-ish lager yeast, S-23 is a close relative. As such it's not "Belgian" at all, but does reflect the diversity of yeasts that are actually used by Belgian brewers.
I'll probably do something similar but aim for 45 to 50 IBUs and bitter with Northern Brewer.
Interesting. With my limited knowledge of WLP515 I would not have guessed it was a lager yeast. White Labs shows a Temperature range that had me thinking it was an ale yeast. I was aware that it is seasonal, but haven’t seen it available through my usual suppliers in the short time I have been aware of it.
Makes sense given that you are bottling particularly. It looks like I should give that yeast a try.
I don't think I've ever posted to this forum, but I saw this thread and felt compelled to share information I found a while back when I became ... somewhat obsessed with this beer. This is a lot longer than I intended to write, but I hope this is helpful to someone out there.
Good luck!
Beer parameters
The items immediately below are all translated from Getest en Geproefd, Deel 2 by Test Aankoop (ISBN 9789491778063), which I'm pretty sure is out of print. Someone on Hobbybrouwen.nl was kind enough to snap a photo of the TB page and share with me.
Colour: 9.8 EBC
Bitterness: 48 IBU (https://www.fattiunabirra.it/belgio/83-taras-boulba.html claims 54 IBU!)
Cloudiness (troebelheid): 7.84 EBC
Apparent extract (schijnbaar extract): 1.99g/100g, or 2º P, so 1.008
Actual extract (werkelijk extract): 4.03g/100g, or 4º P, so 1.016
Original gravity (oorspronkelijk extract): 12.65g/100g, or 12.5º P, so 1.050 (the Italian site above notes 12ºP, think this is more likely)
Hops
In terms of hops, I'm pretty sure it's a combination of Saaz and Challenger. The CSI recipe looks tasty, and while he's noted that a sizeable amount of the hops they use are German, de Baets also says that Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter is his dream beer. From what I've been able to gather, Harvey's uses Challenger in their best bitter. I have no idea where "De Lambikstoemper" gets his information, but FWIW he thinks it's Challenger too (Taras Boulba).
In the second interview linked below (link broken), de Baets states that they use Belgian, Czech, and British hops at the brewery.
To me, fresh TB has an a bright, almost lemony flavour. In the interview with Bill Covaleski from Victory Brewing in the Brewer's Apprentice, he notes
“We’ve learned a lot of what we liked and very little of what we disliked. Say, how Tettnanger hops at a certain point become minerally and metallic. Saaz at a certain threshold is lemony and bright.”
I would love to know what that threshold is, and if that refers to kettle hops or dry hopping.
Malt
In the Walsh presentation, he claims that TB is brewed with 100% pilsner malt. I would be a bit surprised if this were the case, given the colour and appearance. I still think there's some malted wheat in there. But Vinnie Cilurzo (third link below in article list) writes:
"It’s such a simple beer—one malt, a couple of hops varieties, one yeast for fermentation, another for bottle fermentation."
So it seems possible. I'm assuming Vinnie has actually talked with de Baets about the recipe, and I do think it's simpler than many of the clone attempts that are out there. The yeast is doing most of the heavy lifting, but I honestly have no clue which one he's using.
Yeast
I have no idea. For a while, I thought it might be the Duvel strain. Previously I wondered if it might be the Blaugies or Ardennes strains, but the latter tends to produce bright beers. Your guess is as good as mine.
Mash schedule
45-62-72-78°C (based on A visit to Brasserie de la Senne, which full of nice details); Derek Walsh suggested a single temperature infusion instead, but personally I don't think this likely.
Fermentation temp
Start at 21-22°C, rise to 26°C to encourage ester formation. Secondary fermentation at 23°C for 15 days. (same source as mash info)
Random links related to TB
https://www.brouwland.com/content/assets/docs/Brouwland Hip Hops final.pdf (link defunct, tried the Wayback Machine, but no dice -- was a great presentation by Derek Walsh with info about TB on slide 43)Yeast: Brasserie de la Senne
A few weeks back I was lucky to spend a great deal of time in Brussels. The city is fantastic if you have never been. It embodies many of my favourite things – beautiful shopfronts, cultural …farmhousebeerblog.wordpress.com
Pick Six: Russian River Brewing's Vinnie Cilurzo
“What Would Vinnie Drink?” His list is surprisingly devoid of the hoppy beers one might expect…beerandbrewing.com
Interviews with Yvan de Baets
EP-137 Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne — Good Beer Hunting (fast-forward to 8m45s, he talks about Taras Boulba)
(episode of Tournée Générale, 2011-02-23, now blocked by the copyright holder, interview with de Baets was at 14 minutes in)
https://www.lecho.be/nieuws/archief/Le-brasseur-extremiste-Acte-I-Senne-1/9565816 (in French, and paywalled)
Interesting. I also recall seeing that the yeast is from a "popular Belgian brewery", but I hadn't heard about the Tettnang hops. Did you happen to hear this in an interview, or in an article somewhere?
I'm very excited to hear how that turns out. I might give it a go myself, depending on what results, I'm happy to share my recipe and notes here as well. The local importer will be bringing in Taras Boulba this summer. I haven't had a fresh one in forever...Just had a chance to read this now.
Thanks for all the great information.
The suggested hops would be perfect as the Northern Bewer and Tettnang I had originally planned on using will be all used up in a bockbier before I get to brew this. I do however have a lot of Sazz and Challenger left.
I'll post the recipe and results when I have brewed it, either next month or in May.
I spoke to someone from De La Senne face to face while drinking Taras Boulba. They only mentioned Saaz and Tettnang. They didn't want to give too much away, but also said lots of hops, and pilsner malt. Other people have reported the use of Tettnang if you read around.
Although Roncoroni and Verstrepen in their book measured XX at only 38 IBU in the lab, despite talk elsewhere of it being 65 IBU. And 10 EBC FWIW. Thinking about it, it's actually a bit weird that they don't include TB, they have most of the other big names of Belgium.
I only mean that XX is a relatively highly hopped beer, and relatively bitter. I think YdB took that notion with him from his time there, along with a sense of American hopping and of dry English session bitters, and of saisons. TB ticks his boxes. XX is Brewer's Gold and Mittelfruh, apparently.
I had the exact same thought when I received my copy of Belgian Beer: Tested and Tasted. It will surprise no one who has read my initial post here that Taras Boulba was the reason I bought that book, and it wasn't even included!
As an Englishman who drinks great beers of low gravity all the time, it doesn't really amaze me so much. At 4.5% it is stronger than a lot of English cask ales - the majority taste for cask ales is between 3.8 and 4.5%. I drank Boddingtons bitter in the 70s, and I wish I could drink that beer now - it was not dissimilar to TB really -1035, high bitterness, very dry, very pale. English hops but mostly bittering, just a small dry hop. YdB would have adored it! Some English beers are close to the saisons that he espouses, I reckon. There seems to be a suspicion of low ABV beers in the USA? I suspect that will shift if it isn't already. A lot of flavour can exist in a 1035 - 1040 beer and the drinkability is a big win. The first time I drank TB was when it was served to me by a representative of the brewery from a fresh keg brought over that day from the brewery and it was something else. I loved it and I share your enthusiasm for it. I like the Bruxellensis by DelaS too.
Deuchars was very good in its heyday too. There are plenty of beers around now that follow the same model in the UK, pale, dry, hoppy, low abv. With all sorts of hops adorning them from home and abroad. Good times.
Except they are not distinct styles. One of the great lies of North American brewing is that British yeast are low-attenuation, non-phenolic yeasts like Windsor, when it's a complete outlier that only really makes sense when you think that it originally came from a multistrain that also included the ancestor of Nottingham. Nobody in the UK brews with a single-strain yeast with <70% attenuation on a standard modern wort. And a surprising number use members of the saison family, particularly in northern England - if you look at a real catalogue of British yeasts like Brewlab, you'll see that 5 out of 11 on their short list mention some kind of phenolic character - a long way from the story that the North American yeast labs would tell you.
www.nature.com
Common maybe not, but it was on tap at Beermoth pre lockdown. Wasn't on there when I visited last week. I need to get hold of a bottle for comparison.
Well I'd always be cautious about saying a yeast lab strain "is" Brewery X's strain - at the very least most lab strains are many generations removed from a single colony taken from what was probably a multistrain. And WLP540 may make similar beer to Rochefort dregs but it's not nearly as complex so there's definitely something missing there, whether missing components of a multistrain or the blandification that seems to happen in the course of getting to yeast lab freezers. And I have some beer in my stash to prove it, Rochefort dregs are becoming one of my favourite yeasts.
I had a crawl before lockdown where something like 4 out of 5 freehouses had it on. It helps that Cave Direct are the importers, who have a big presence in Mcr - anywhere that has Paulaner on is supplied by them (and so could source some Taras for you if you chat them up...).
They're definitely there - it's not prominent as a lot of English processes try to damp them down, but it's there in a good pint of Harvey's for instance (whose yeast is northern, from John Smith's)
Oh yes, can only agree.
What is the Palm yeast bank?
Interesting about the Paulaner connection. Agree about Harvey's. Instantly noticeable. The most Belgian of regular English beers perhaps.
Palm are one of the bigger breweries in Belgium, who bought Rodenbach among others before being bought in turn by Bavaria/Swinckels. Like Whitbread, they made a point of collecting yeast for study.
Just to be clear - the only connection is Cave Direct being the importer, but Paulaner is the most reliable way to tell if a bar is supplied by them. They also have things like Delirium on their books, and most recently have started importing Tipopils. Their retail outlet is www.beermerchants.com - they have a bar near the Olympic Park in London, the club night for at least one of the early Brewcons was held there.
