Jule Hvidtøl - Danish Christmas Beer

[renrutle]

I was reading through Michael Jackson's "The New World Guide to Beer" for inspiration and came across Jule Hvidtøl in the Danish section. It is a low alcohol desert beer that I think SWMBO would love. Problem is I have not been able to locate a recipe on the InterWebs. The closest I got was this post from 2010 that links to a site in Norwegian.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/help-finding-christmas-beer-juloel-recipe-200606/

Before I adapt to this problem by learning Norwegian I thought I would ask here if anyone has a recipe for this type of beer? Skaal!

 

[Hujo]

Well, i wouldn't learn Norwegian, especially since that link leads to the buy/sale section of that forum. http://forum.norbrygg.no/forums/spesial-juleol.26/ is a link to that forums christmas beer recipe section, it's not that hard to interpret the recipes there, i think. I couldn't find a recipe for what you're looking for though, neither on that site or by google. The problem when googling is that it's a common ingredient in baking and cooking, so you get tons of bread recipes and such. "jule hvidtøl opskrift" is what i googled if you want to give it a try.

From what i gathered though it's about 1,7-1,9ABV, a lager made with "big amounts of münchen, chocolate and caramel malts", another wikipedia site said it was a wheatbeer, but I don't think that's true, probably just a misinterpretation of the word hvidt.

You probably knew all this from your book, but it was all I could find!

 

[Hujo]

Okay, this intrigued me a bit, so i kept searching.

Found this, which seems to be some danes failing in producing a clone. The FG of the beer they're cloning is 1.036. Apparently the fermentation is stopped by pasteurization, or they're using the weird yeast Saccharomyces ludwigii, which is apperantly a super low attenuator. I'm not that good at danish, so you know.

http://www.haandbrygforum.dk/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=99

Long story short, people are mashing insanely high, using a bit of licorice, someone's using lactose, etc..

Here are some recipes from that thread, I don't know how they would work, I like the idea of using lactose instead of pasteurization.

http://www.jensgam.dk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/011.pdf

http://www.haandbryg.dk/cgi-bin/beercalc.cgi?pick=M%F8rk%20hvidt%F8l%202003

 

[renrutle]

Thank you Hujo for the information. I will look through these sites later today.

edit: As for the wheat; it was originally brewed with wheat but that was changed out for barley a long time ago. (+100 years) Also, there are both ale and lager versions depending on the yeast used.

edit: I think hvidt (white) is similar is usage to the usage of Weiß (white) in Berliner Weiß also a white-wheat beer from Germany.