Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale

As I mentioned before, the SheppyBrew Beer Model got me Jamil Zainasheff's and John Palmer's book Brewing Classic Styles for my birthday.  Of course I spent lots of time looking it over and based most of my recipes so far in 2010 on recipes in the book.  I asked her if she would like to pick out a recipe from the book for me to brew.  To my surprise, she actually spent the time to look through the book and picked out "Antwerp Afternoon", which is Jamil's award winning Belgium Pale Ale.

So, I plugged it into BeerSmith.  Jamil's recipe calls for a bit of Biscuit malt to be steeped, but BeerSmith wants it to be mashed.  Because I was going to have to do a partial mash anyway, I decided to bring the base grain up to the same amount as the LME, making this (by far) the most economical brew I've done so far.

I was very pleased with the way this beer turned out.  The beer model likes it too, which is a bit of a disappointment as I would like to drink it all myself.  It sort of tastes like a little brother to my Phat & Tyred Ale.

The Buckwheat Belgium Pale Ale is a well-balanced, easy-drinking beer.  It finishes pretty dry with some initial malt-sweetness that does not last to the finish.  The biscuit malt gives it a nice nutty / bready taste.  It has enough malt complexity to prevent it from being a boring tasting beer.  There may be a hint of ester fruitiness, but certainly not too wild.  The relatively low alcohol (especially if you compare it to my recent beers) and overall drinkability should allow us to drink it by the liter with no problem on those hot summer days.

I am going to brew this again (and again and again).

Batch #3 was my first attempt at all-grain brewing.  It is interesting that I am not saving a ton of money on this all-grain batch.  My LBHS didn't have the SafBrew, so I went with the US05.  The whole thing was a bit of a learning experience.  My OG ended up much lower than expected pointing out that I have AG process improvements to make.  The beer turned out lighter in color and body.  This batch is called Buckwheat light.

Batch #4 was a 5 gallon batch split between two Mr. Beer fermenters.  I decided to use one to test how safbrew T58 would compare the S33.  T58 would probably be closer to a spicy, peppery flavor that would be appropriate for a Belgium beer.  S33 will be cleaner and more in line with what the beer model likes.  The mash efficiency on the big batch was significantly higher, so I had a couple of bigger beers than planned.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean I need to fine-tune my process (again) for bigger boils.

Batches #6 and #7 were another experiment.  This time, I tried half the batch with S33 and the other half with US05.  The differences here were less, but the beer model clearly prefered S33.  

Batch #8 uses S33 and was sized up to brew in the 6 gallon carboy.

Batch #9 was exactly the same as #8 except I batch sparge in my 10 gallon cooler instead of the modified BIAB I used before.

I brought the grain bill (and thus ABV) down a bit for Batch #10. I also switched back to my mash tun.

Batch 11 was pretty much the same as batch 10 except I added in a little more caramunich, biscuit malt and EKG hops.

There are a few posts on my blog about this beer.  Follow this link to look at those.

Recipe Characteristics

Ingredients

Mash Profile

Batch sparge with 2 steps (1.81gal, 4.12gal) of 168.0 F water

Brewing Record