Recreating a long lost memeory

[tomsen]

Two years ago I was at a local brewery and tried out their new beer, a Belgian table beer acc. to the menu.
It was a moderetly dark beer around 20-25 SRM and had a pretty low hop profile(but noticeble) and a tasty malt profile and a nice foamy head.

So now in the present, the brewer that has made that beer has left the country and I started home brewing 5 months back.
I have read a couple of articles and I am now pretty sure that that beer was a low ABV belgian pale ale. It was around 4.3%.

So this is the recipe that I came up with:
84% bohemian pilsner (no belgian pilsner available)
5% caraaroma for color and aroma
5% carapils for head retention
3% melanoidin
3% acidulated malt

mash 80min @ 67°C
mashout 10min @ 77°C

15g Perle 60min
15g Hallertauer mittelfrüh 30min
20g Hallertauer mittelfrüh 5min
(hallertauer would be the choice for me because I have around 400g in the freezer and I read german noble hops go well in belgian beers)

Ferment with a belgian ale yeast at 22°C

Beer should come out with 1.045 - 4.5% and 24 IBU

What do you think, can this recipe produce a solid beer or do I have to many special malts in there?

 

[McKnuckle]

I think the grain bill sounds good for a start, even if it may have a couple more specialty grains than strictly needed. For example, the color in many traditional Belgian recipes comes at least partly from sugar that has been caramelized to different degrees. Sugar is a big part of these recipes. For a lower ABV brown ale, it might just be pilsner, a kilned malt like Munich, melanoiden or aromatic, and a dark sugar syrup (acidulated is fine to lower mash pH).

It sounds like the inspiration for the beer you're researching might be a patersbier, a.k.a. a "single," a lower ABV style based on a dubbel recipe.

Ultimately, the key to most Belgian ales is the yeast and fermentation schedule. So I would research that a bit. There's a good book called Brew Like a Monk, by Stan Hieronymus, that you might wish to pick up. It offers lots of insight into what makes Belgian beers (and brewers) tick.

 

[RM-MN]

Just some thoughts:

I've read that adding flaked barley to a recipe promotes good heading. You might substitute that for carapils. You might not need carapils anyway. I haven't added any of it to my beers and still get good heading.

Mashout is only needed for fly sparging and then only if there is still starches to be converted to sugars. If you aren't fly sparging, forget this step. If your mash efficiency is in the upper 90% ranged, you won't have enough starches left to convert so stopping conversion won't be necessary anyway.

Does your water have enough bicarbonate that you need to acidulate the mash? You probably don't need the acidulated malt. It likely won't hurt to have it in there.

if you are bottling pay close attention to priming calculators. For the big head on a Belgian you probably need a little higher carbonation. A decent priming calculator will have a category for this.

 

[tomsen]

Read up on the Patersbier and yes it sounds like the beer I had was definately insipired by that or fit that style even spot on(not a style expert)
Checked out some reviews of the brew like a monk book and put it on my homebrew book list, it sounds interesting. I was also considering adding sugar to the beer but thought that will probably increase the ABV too much

About the carapils, I have too little experience here, why do you prefer flaked barley over carapils?
The mashout and the acidulated malt I added because I am struggeling a bit with low efficiency, and as far as I know its from pH, I sadly have no water report, so I cannot tell you if I have enough bicarbonates. Mashout does no harm I think? thats why I do it

I think when this beer will be done my keezer will be ready so prolly will keg it!