Good job, the straffe is one of my mates favourite beers and it’s not cheap to purchase. I have one in the fridge but not tried it yet. Cheers I bet you wasn’t up late after those 2 😂🤣👍🍻
I'd maybe look into driving the ferment temp even higher, that might be what's giving the straffe its backend citrus note...? Enjoyable video as always. Cheers!
trying to match a beer is always a challenge. ive been trying to clone a beer for 3 years. i just made my 3rd attempt. in about 2 weeks ill see the end results.
It's hard to do, but as your example proves, it's also a slow business. The amount of time between re-brews is long, as you don't want to be drinking the same beer all the time. Still good fun though......
@@brewandbuild i totally agree! my mexican lager just got bottles up. it will be ready december 25. simple grain bill . weyermann pilsner, vienna, and flaked maize-corn. my stores didnt have mexican lager yeast though so i had to substitute for german lager yeast. hopefully there wont be too much difference between te yeast.
I like your timing for Xmas day, nicely done. 👏 Suspect that you'll get a bit more yeast derived flavour from the German yeast, but let's face it, a sizable addition of corn is going to clean it up pretty well. Hope it's a nice Xmas brew.
Nice Video again, thank you. I like your recipes and your analytic approach to tweak them. I recently brewed a Belgian Blonde with MJ M31 which I harvested. It fermented down to 1.005 and I hope it is predictable in this ballpark I will stick to your initial grainbill for my brew tomorrow. Great recipe! I think high attenuation and carbonation is key to drinkability in combination with light malt sweetness. My first attempt was with 9.7% an easydrinker! Referring to the hint of orange I recommend a warmer fermentation, too, to benefit from the esters by the yeast. Happy brewing and happy holidays!
I'm definitely going to have to try raising the fermentation temp a bit. It might just be the key to this orange thing. Quite a coincidence that you bring up M31. I was just looking over some of my very early brews where I used M31 quite a lot. My notes say that I kept getting a sharp note which I assumed was yeast derived. Having looked them over more thoroughly, I think the issue may have been water and mash ph. The short of this is that I figured I should give the yeast a re-visit, but if you are using it today, then that's great. Please let me know how it turns out. I'm particularly interested in the FG and the comparison to M41. Cheers and happy holidays.
You could swap out the carapils for the same weight of Wheat, head retention through protein and slight cloudiness to match the original. Honey can add sweetness and lighten the body, it is 95% fermentable. Maybe take out some 200g of pale malt?
Wheat would work in this, and in fact it was one of my first ideas to put into version 1. However, I decided that it's probably not in the Straffe as it's not listed on the ingredients. Maybe in such small amounts, it may not need to be listed, but major allergens like wheat are supposed to be labelled in bold on the ingredients list. The fact that it's not there says to me that it's probably not in it. I brew quite a bit with honey (we keep bees...) so I can recognise the taste in beer quite quickly. It's not a taste I get from the original, so whilst I think it would work very well in this, I don't think it's in the original. 🍺🍺
I wonder if the yeast is also half the equation, the Straffe Hendrik is bottle conditioned isn't it? I wonder if you could build a yeast starter up from the trub in the bottle.
There's a load of yeast left in the Straffe bottles, so building up from there would certainly be pretty easy. The one problem with that is not knowing whether they pitch a different strain to the fermentation strain. Therefore, I tend not to do that, unless I can find confirmation that they use the same yeast. Chimay is an example where i can find enough testimonials of this, and so I propagate that from bottles. It may work though, although I think the Westmalle strain (WLP530)is pretty close in taste.
Thanks for this awesome video! Do you have any details on what the fermentation temperature was? I got a jet fuel taste that didn't go away with wlp530, free rise 18-23C. Now I've made a triple with Lallemand abbey, free rise 17-19.5C. It got a small peak at 20C. But this one tastes very good. Closest I've been to commercial examples. I want to try your recipe after some other brews on the list, but I don't think I dare have wlp530 higher than 20C.
I pitch at about 18.5c and whilst I let it "free-rise" up to 22c, I kind of cheat a bit. I hold the beer at 19c for the first 24 hours (using wet towels if need be) as this is where you're going to be at most risk of getting those jet fuel fusil tastes. After the 24 hours, it's a free rise to 21.5 - 22 c, at which point I hold it there with whatever means necessary, once again wet towels. Now, I'm going to qualify this free rise thing. If you're fermenting in 15c ambient, then free rise will be very slow and controlled, however, if you're fermenting in 25c ambient, it going to get there in a couple of hours. So the whole free-rise thing is a bit misleading. I should say that if I've got very warm conditions at the time, I control the rise so that it happens over about 2 days, although I don't tend to force heat it (I'd prefer to wrap it in insulation and let it do the work). It's definitely an ambient condition issue.... Now, I just had someone suggest a higher ferment, in order to bring out some citrus notes from the yeast. That's an interesting idea, but it will need to be controlled to avoid those fusils you're talking about. I would say, don't write off 530. It's my favorite Abbey strain.
@@brewandbuild My two theories are that the Trappist monks do this increase slowly or as you described. But I also have what I call the size matters hypothesis. In a tank of thousands of liters, much of the beer including the yeast cake will be under a lot of pressure. Which I think allows for higher temperatures. You can read in BLAM that beer got fewer esters when the tank had a large height to area ratio. Will try wlp530 when I test your recipe. May be a while because all my bottles are full. Not enough bottles to brew is an alchol problem.
I keep all my beer outside in a stone barn. It's reasonably temperature stable, and cool. I never really bulk condition, it all gets bottled and then ages in the bottle. The store bought was with me for about 3 months, didn't check it for a date however. It was also kept with my other beer.
How many liters of finished wort should there be? 21% sugar actually makes it relatively cheap to brew one of the world's best beers lol. It's also cheap hops.
I always end up with a finished post boil volume of about 19 litres. After settling, I get about 18 litres into the fermentor. Yeah, that's the thing isn't it. So much of the alcohol is from the sugar, that it's a bit like doing a kit brew. Seems crazy for such an expensive commercial beer copy huh?
Good job, the straffe is one of my mates favourite beers and it’s not cheap to purchase. I have one in the fridge but not tried it yet. Cheers I bet you wasn’t up late after those 2 😂🤣👍🍻
Ha, you're right there. Back in my twenties, that would have been a good warm up for the night. These days, that was the night.
I can tell by your description that would be right up my ally, cheers!
Yep, I can genuinely say that this is a good brew. 🍺🍺
Belgians are complex enigmas at the best of times, I never have much luck cloning them. Seems like you're well on the way with this one though!
Complex indeed..... you're spot on there. 👍
But yes, this is on the way to being dialed for me.
I'd maybe look into driving the ferment temp even higher, that might be what's giving the straffe its backend citrus note...? Enjoyable video as always. Cheers!
That's a good point. I hadn't thought about trying to force citrus from the yeast on this. You've given me something to work on there. Cheers.
trying to match a beer is always a challenge. ive been trying to clone a beer for 3 years. i just made my 3rd attempt. in about 2 weeks ill see the end results.
It's hard to do, but as your example proves, it's also a slow business. The amount of time between re-brews is long, as you don't want to be drinking the same beer all the time. Still good fun though......
@@brewandbuild i totally agree! my mexican lager just got bottles up. it will be ready december 25. simple grain bill . weyermann pilsner, vienna, and flaked maize-corn. my stores didnt have mexican lager yeast though so i had to substitute for german lager yeast. hopefully there wont be too much difference between te yeast.
I like your timing for Xmas day, nicely done. 👏
Suspect that you'll get a bit more yeast derived flavour from the German yeast, but let's face it, a sizable addition of corn is going to clean it up pretty well. Hope it's a nice Xmas brew.
@@brewandbuild so do i.
Nice Video again, thank you.
I like your recipes and your analytic approach to tweak them.
I recently brewed a Belgian Blonde with MJ M31 which I harvested. It fermented down to 1.005 and I hope it is predictable in this ballpark I will stick to your initial grainbill for my brew tomorrow. Great recipe!
I think high attenuation and carbonation is key to drinkability in combination with light malt sweetness. My first attempt was with 9.7% an easydrinker!
Referring to the hint of orange I recommend a warmer fermentation, too, to benefit from the esters by the yeast.
Happy brewing and happy holidays!
I'm definitely going to have to try raising the fermentation temp a bit. It might just be the key to this orange thing.
Quite a coincidence that you bring up M31. I was just looking over some of my very early brews where I used M31 quite a lot. My notes say that I kept getting a sharp note which I assumed was yeast derived. Having looked them over more thoroughly, I think the issue may have been water and mash ph.
The short of this is that I figured I should give the yeast a re-visit, but if you are using it today, then that's great.
Please let me know how it turns out. I'm particularly interested in the FG and the comparison to M41.
Cheers and happy holidays.
You could swap out the carapils for the same weight of Wheat, head retention through protein and slight cloudiness to match the original. Honey can add sweetness and lighten the body, it is 95% fermentable. Maybe take out some 200g of pale malt?
Wheat would work in this, and in fact it was one of my first ideas to put into version 1. However, I decided that it's probably not in the Straffe as it's not listed on the ingredients.
Maybe in such small amounts, it may not need to be listed, but major allergens like wheat are supposed to be labelled in bold on the ingredients list. The fact that it's not there says to me that it's probably not in it.
I brew quite a bit with honey (we keep bees...) so I can recognise the taste in beer quite quickly. It's not a taste I get from the original, so whilst I think it would work very well in this, I don't think it's in the original. 🍺🍺
I wonder if the yeast is also half the equation, the Straffe Hendrik is bottle conditioned isn't it? I wonder if you could build a yeast starter up from the trub in the bottle.
There's a load of yeast left in the Straffe bottles, so building up from there would certainly be pretty easy.
The one problem with that is not knowing whether they pitch a different strain to the fermentation strain. Therefore, I tend not to do that, unless I can find confirmation that they use the same yeast. Chimay is an example where i can find enough testimonials of this, and so I propagate that from bottles.
It may work though, although I think the Westmalle strain (WLP530)is pretty close in taste.
Thanks for this awesome video! Do you have any details on what the fermentation temperature was? I got a jet fuel taste that didn't go away with wlp530, free rise 18-23C. Now I've made a triple with Lallemand abbey, free rise 17-19.5C. It got a small peak at 20C. But this one tastes very good. Closest I've been to commercial examples. I want to try your recipe after some other brews on the list, but I don't think I dare have wlp530 higher than 20C.
I pitch at about 18.5c and whilst I let it "free-rise" up to 22c, I kind of cheat a bit.
I hold the beer at 19c for the first 24 hours (using wet towels if need be) as this is where you're going to be at most risk of getting those jet fuel fusil tastes. After the 24 hours, it's a free rise to 21.5 - 22 c, at which point I hold it there with whatever means necessary, once again wet towels.
Now, I'm going to qualify this free rise thing. If you're fermenting in 15c ambient, then free rise will be very slow and controlled, however, if you're fermenting in 25c ambient, it going to get there in a couple of hours. So the whole free-rise thing is a bit misleading. I should say that if I've got very warm conditions at the time, I control the rise so that it happens over about 2 days, although I don't tend to force heat it (I'd prefer to wrap it in insulation and let it do the work). It's definitely an ambient condition issue....
Now, I just had someone suggest a higher ferment, in order to bring out some citrus notes from the yeast. That's an interesting idea, but it will need to be controlled to avoid those fusils you're talking about.
I would say, don't write off 530. It's my favorite Abbey strain.
@@brewandbuild My two theories are that the Trappist monks do this increase slowly or as you described. But I also have what I call the size matters hypothesis. In a tank of thousands of liters, much of the beer including the yeast cake will be under a lot of pressure. Which I think allows for higher temperatures. You can read in BLAM that beer got fewer esters when the tank had a large height to area ratio. Will try wlp530 when I test your recipe. May be a while because all my bottles are full. Not enough bottles to brew is an alchol problem.
@@oliverekeland7003 I like that pressure theory, it certainly fits with this. What an awful problem, you have too much beer. 😂😂😂😂
How did you age the homebrew? How old was the store bought one?
I keep all my beer outside in a stone barn. It's reasonably temperature stable, and cool. I never really bulk condition, it all gets bottled and then ages in the bottle.
The store bought was with me for about 3 months, didn't check it for a date however. It was also kept with my other beer.
How many liters of finished wort should there be? 21% sugar actually makes it relatively cheap to brew one of the world's best beers lol. It's also cheap hops.
I always end up with a finished post boil volume of about 19 litres. After settling, I get about 18 litres into the fermentor.
Yeah, that's the thing isn't it. So much of the alcohol is from the sugar, that it's a bit like doing a kit brew. Seems crazy for such an expensive commercial beer copy huh?