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You are here: Home --> Forum Home --> Brewing Forum --> Recipe Discussion --> A Tale of farmhouse ales / inspiration...

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mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Thoughts on hops:

While the family is from German descent, the desire to keep this somewhat American centric has me thinking. So while most of these are not American lineage - they can be considered immigrant-ish:

Northern Brewer - a little bit of dank, mint, pine
Ahtanum - earthy with some fruit and floral
Chinook - pine, spicy, citrus grapefruit
Warrior - resinous
US Saaz, US Tett - for the obvious saison connection
Crystal - black currant, spicy, floral
Nugget

Would restrain the hops to two per recipe




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


|I'd also keep the malt bill simple

Just for inspiration,

Let's assume we're on a farm way out an malting our own grains with relative simple equipment. How would the process be? Not very different from a quality malt, but the process control will be lacking:

- Germination may be uneven, a small part may still be chitmalt a part may already be matting.
- Floor malting, work to do in the field, didn't turn over the malt often enough, so the inner part of the malt heaps may have some bruehmalt aspects going on.
- Kilning. On wood, what wood, or maybe even corn cobs? Some smoke will be unavoidable. Temperature distribution will be uneven within a batch and even more between batches.

So, within a batch we'll have a range of malts, from chit malt to munich, on average with a tad darker kilning than we have now, the quality of the barley is somewhat lower. Could Mild malt be an average of all these? What would the distribution of the diversion be, a Gauss curve from chit to munich on the germination and a gauss curve from pale malt to brown malt on the kiln/roast?


What I do for my rustical beers to simulate such a "single" yet complex malt is make a distribution chit pale munich, take a part of that (1/3 - 2/3) and roast it for 30 min @ 180�°C, every 10 minutes I take out 30% of the malt. The danger is to over roast and you'll have to much Brown malt flavour.

I fermented this with WLP072 and later some Orval dregs. Also did the wort syrup thing to get some caramell flavours in it. Quite a bit of low alpha hops, Strisselspalt, for a firm bitterness. Aged for a year. Dry hopped with a lot of Strisslespalt a few days before botteling. Beautifull beer.

Similar method I did for a "poor mans beer" the grist was 50/50 rye malt/ oats malt treated in various ways, toasted and smoked, long boil and then slightly soured and fermented with a 50/50 combination of BelleSaison and Brett.C so there's nothing left for the Lacto's. Enjoying one right now, could be a table beer version of a Porter light, quite Brown and rustic yet elegant.




Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by ingoogni

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Ingoogni - going to come and visit next time I am in Belgium. Definitely.

Going to chew on this, but it is brilliant.

Something to keep in mind. These folks made their own silage, beer and liquor for years - bringing their recipes and traditions from Germany. Bavaria specifically for the Crons and Black Forest for the Sears. My GGF distilled his own fuel (and the occasional snort) from corn, corn stalks, wheat and brake cane, 55 gallons at a time. Pre-prohibition for the record :) - wish I had pictures of the setup - it was truly brilliant. Ethanol would be blended into the gas for farming. Later he got a fuel license which was rare for the county.

hmmm...






Posted 34 days ago.

testingapril
Charter Member
Atlanta, GA
595 Posts


I've only been lightly following this thread, but for my "historical" saison, I didn't roast my own malt, but I tried to approximate the wide variation in historical malt by using a variety of lightly roasted malt. I'm looking forward to how it turns out after being fermented with an unknown sacch strain and a couple lacto strains and a couple brett strains. I might keg it tonight if I have time. The grain bill is super complicated, but that's in an attempt to mimic a rather simple grain bill of old.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/236311/small-saison




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


|going to come and visit next time I am in Belgium

You're welcome :)

When I started brewing Pils malt was all I could get and every now and then a bit Munich, so you get to be inventive. It is also why I like Beechams "Brewing on the ones" presentation so much, it is also what many of the older stiles are about, "one" malt. But what I was doing here was using these same methods to intentionally make what he calls a "Brown beer", not accidentally. So, there is still control, coherence and character and the impression of one brownish malt. No cara/crystal, no chocolates and aromatics and certainly no black malt, that would have been ashes.

It could probably indeed be done without post-processing the malts, pils, mild, biscuit, munich, amber, aromatic, flaked barley, smoked in the 'right' combination/distribution?

Thinking of it, I made and Ur-Bock this way, Munich and 25% wheat malt, both malts half the light and half dark version, mix and take 30% to toast and smoke over cherry wood in several steps. Compensate the enzyme loss by using some pils malt somewhere between 30 -  50% of the weight of the toasted malts. Was very nice, malty slight roast and smoke.




Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


Ingoogni, I think you would have been right at home with the BrewUnited Challenge. Of course, shipping beer halfway across the globe for a competition isn't really feasible...




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


Hey "Dad" I seriously considered as I like the concept but indeed, shipping would have been problematic. The biggest problem is the list of some 60 want to brew recipes and some 20 have to brew ones. The list of "inspiration recipes" is growing with the day, I stopped counting that one and I have to start welding my brewery together.

The images just made me want to go to the farm next to where I grew up. It's about 350 years old and the oak of the stables is still the original. What yeast would live there, now I really have to harvest some... Have been talking to a cheese maker today, he has isolated several strains of Debaryomyces, could be nice barrel ageing beer with those. Etc, etc.




Posted 34 days ago.

uberg33k
Charter Member
The Internet
314 Posts


I just thought of something. Are these beers just inspirational and evoke feelings of the place or be historically accurate for the time and place? If you're going for accuracy, you are going to have to skip most of what's been suggested here. I can give you a few links and suggestions if you care. If it's just inspirational, party on Wayne.



Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


I am not going for any real kind of historical accuracy... really looking at this as an inspirational process. Maybe a bit of story telling through brewing, exploring a few adjuncts and processes I haven't mastered - and still really keeping the recipes simple, if slightly outside any real guidelines.

This will also help me align my 'small batch' system against the bigger system... successful recipes will be brewed to scale and entered in comps.




Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


About 20 minutes into the boil doing a scaled version of -> www.brewunited.com/view_recipe.php?re.... First of two batches to compare Yeast Bay Wallonian to their Saison Blend (not the brett blend). Did my step mash for this - 148F for 45, 158 for 15, Mash Out for 10. The batch in the keg (Belle Saison) has this really creamy mouthfeel and head retention all day long.

Need to get into the garage this weekend and do a BoPils.




Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


Can't wait to see how this turns out.




Posted 34 days ago.

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