Brooklyn Brew Shop's Bruxelles Blonde

On Monday (October 12th), I brewed my next beer: Bruxelles Blonde, from Brooklyn Brew Shop.

As usual, I'll start with the particulars:

Informational link: http://brooklynbrewshop.com/be...lles-blonde-beer-mix

Instructions: http://brooklynbrewshop.com/di...e%20Instructions.pdf

Awesome, must-see video: https://vimeo.com/47840795

I brewed the beer straight according to the directions, and it seemed to go very well. I prepped everything beforehand and went right down the line - four hours from start to finish, to the minute. Temperatures during the mash stayed in range, the sparge and boil went without incident - and I was loving the aroma of the Styrian Golding hops with the fresh-smelling malts. There really isn't anything else to report - the brew went that smoothly.

It is currently fermenting in our bedroom closet, where the temperatures are the most stable and "controllable." I checked on it Tuesday morning and this morning, and things seem to be going very well. As is usually the case with BBS's mixes, there was quite a bit of activity with the blow-off-tube early on, which will most likely calm down by tonight or possibly tomorrow. At that time, I will replace the blow-off tube with an airlock, and then leave it alone for about three weeks.

I'm looking forward to this beer, as everything I have seen written about it sings its praises - light and refreshing, a true joy to drink.

More as it happens, etc. &c....

Ron

I forgot to mention, when I switched from blow-off tube to airlock, the beer looked really good. Plenty of evidence of very good fermentation, and the beer was starting to clear very nicely. The colour was a bit darker than I expected, but otherwise, I think we are well on track for some wonderful stuff here.

I will, of course, keep updating as events unfold.

Thanks to some outstanding graphics assistance from a member of another forum, I have three very-cool labels to choose from for this beer. I picked the picture, gave him the stats and asked him what he could come up with, and he provided these:







Which should it be?

I am partial toward the bottom one, but The Beautiful Mrs. Tas says the top one. And the middle one has some really nice artistic qualities that work well, too ~

Decisions, decisions!

My hearty thanks to TheCADJockey at the HomeBrewTalk Forum for his help with this! :mug:

I bottled this beer on Saturday, 28 November; about 3 weeks after I had planned to bottle it, but life gets that way - especially during hunting season! No big deal - in fact, my better beers have been the ones that were bottled "late."

The process really went off without a hitch, and I ended up with nearly 10 bottles, which is a "perfect yield" for a 1-gallon batch that doesn't happen very often. One HUGE help was that, for the first time, I used a spring-loaded tip on the end of the bottling rig, which kept me from flinging beer all over the place, as is often the case with the thumb-driven clamps. I am 100% convinced that the spring-loaded tip and the mini auto-siphon are the two absolute best investments I have made in my brewing experience. I managed to suck up a little bit of trub, but I am not concerned about this. My experience is that it settles with the bottle-conditioning sediment and poses no trouble at all, especially when the beer starts out as amazingly clear as this one did before I began bottling.

With the un-carbonated, un-finished beer that I had leftover from bottling, I was able to sample what promises to be an excellent and outstanding brew. So far, it is shaping up to be a nice Belgian ale - a little darker in colour than I expected it to be, but otherwise as good as I could ask for. We'll see how it turns out in the end. The flavour was bright and "awake" - there's not really any other way to put it - with a nice flora character from the hops that left me wishing I would have brewed this in the late spring or early summer. The local honey that I used as a priming sugar also comes into play, giving the beer a rich, mellow, addicting undertone that I simply can't imagine with corn or table sugar. I am pretty sure that this will be a beer that I brew often in the future.

My bottles are hanging out now in the closet, and will continue to do so until at least three weeks have passed. I'll then refrigerate the finished beer for a week before sampling it, and my patience will hopefully be rewarded.