A gold medal recipe
OK, that was humbling.
Since you are at this site you probably know I wrote a book about brewing Trappist and abbey style beers. And if you read the book you know that I came back from Belgium pounding my fist - on the desk, on corked bottles, on old brewing texts, just about anywhere - about the simplicity of Trappist recipes.
And the importance of sugar.
So what was the recipe like in the beer I helped judge as the gold medal winner for Strong Belgian Ales in the 2006 National Homebrew Contest? It contained seven malts, and sugar (white, nothing dark) contributed less than 5% of the fermentables. Winner Jamil Zainasheff surely is happy I didn’t help him with this recipe.
The point, up front, is that you can brew beers like those in this family without following a Belgian blueprint; that it’s OK to take a different route when the result is a beer that tastes as good as Zainasheff’s strong dark ale.
He provided details about the recipe in an exchange of e-mails, first writing:
“It was really my first attempt at the style and more indicative of a homebrewer reading the BJCP style guide than anything else. I’m not sure I would formulate it the same way today.” He brewed the beer 11/27/2002.
The batch size was six gallons. Here’s the recipe:
15 pounds pilsener
1 pound aromatic
3 pounds Munich
1 pound caramunich
1 pound Special B
1/2 pound wheat
1/2 pound melanoidin
1 pound Cane sugar
2.2 ounces Hallertauer (4.4 AAs) for 60 minutes
Fermented with White Labs WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale, repitched from a Golden Strong Ale. The beer fermented at about 70 ºF.
Original gravity was 1.103 (24.4 ºP). The FG was 1.022 on 1/12/03. At that time it went into a keg. Zainasheff doesn’t conduct a seconday fermentation. “I don’t do them anymore except for meads and fruit beers,” he wrote. “I find healthy yeast really doesn’t break down so fast that there is a need to separate the beer quickly.”
The beer didn’t exactly hide the fact it was 10.5% or so abv, but unlike some other entries it also didn’t taste first of alcohol. Start judging Belgian Strongs at 8:30 in the morning and you won’t be volunteering for afternoon judging sessions. One of my most frequent suggestions on score sheets was that less alcohol would allow more flavor to come through.
In an exchange about the grain bill, Zainasheff wrote:
“I really tend to prefer the simpler route as well, but I keep finding examples that make me admit there are times when you can get away with insane grain bills. For example, I have a scottish ale recipe that includes all sorts of grains. I never thought it would have worked, but it really does turn out as authentic a scottish light ale as I’ve ever had. I was quite embarrassed about it at first, but then if the results are right…”
He certainly shouldn’t apologize for his Strong Dark. It wasn’t only as rich and complex as the recipe would suggest, but nicely rounded, integrating what could have been a jumble of flavors in a way others on the table didn’t. I’d be thrilled to brew a beer like his.
July 11th, 2006 at 6:52 am
I wouldn’t worry! I suspect whereas the complexity of a Belgian pilsener + sugar + yeast brew comes from the yeast, the flavours in Jamil’s beer came largely from that interestng grain bill.
I guess it just goes to show that there is more than one way to achieve similar ends. I guess the Belgians took the simpler route because quality control on 5 ingredients (water, pils malt, sugar, yeast and hops) is a lot easier to perform than on 11 ingredients!