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Brewing a Belgian Pale Ale

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My Belgain Pale Ale recipe: I brewed an 11 gal. post boil batch anticipating 2 full 5 gallon kegs after fermentation. I referenced Bru'n water Brussels water profile and used 50% reverse osmosis water. Mash efficiency in this case was pretty low at 73%,  Attenuation 92%,  ABV 6%, SRM 8-10, IBU 25, OG 1.050, FG 1.004     Belgian Pale Ale is a more approachable Belgian style as the alcohol content is lower and the phenol and ester flavor character subdued from a combination of Safale US-05 and Whitelabs WLP545 yeast.  Most of the commercial Belgian beers I'm familiar with start at 8.5% and go up from there. This 6% beer is sessionable comparatively speaking. Once the beer has aged for a couple weeks in the fridge, it's clarity and copper color are a thing of beauty. Drawing you in for that first satisfying taste of caramel, toast and bicuit flavors. It still has that distinct phenolic spiciness but less so allowing the subtle pear flavor to shine through. I'm addi...
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Black Session IPA

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    I've tasted a few black IPA's over the years and the ones I've liked the best are those that have absolutely no roasted barley flavor. These are rare, expecially here in Mexico. With a black IPA I want to close my eyes and taste a West coast style IPA with a boat load of hop flavor and aroma, subtle caramel and bread sweetness with a substantial bitter backbone.
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Duvel Clone or Belgian Golden Strong

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 O ne of my favorite styles of beer is the Belgian Golden Strong, and the classic commercial example is Duvel . 
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Bottle In A Bag

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Improvising with Style: A Homebrew Hack Worth Keeping  I ran into a bit of a special needs situation last week, and figured it was worth sharing—not for sympathy, but because this is what I love about homebrewing. No matter how many batches you’ve clocked, something will always go sideways. A missing part, a busted seal, or in this case a completely disgusting bottling bucket. The unexpected shows up, uninvited, and dares you to stay creative. So here's the scene, I'm in my element puttering around the brew cave and I'm needing to bottle a batch of porter. Easy enough—except the only bottling buckets I had looked like they’d been dragged through a gravel lot and left to soak in dirty dishwater for a few years. Discolored, scratched to hell, and definitely not the sterile environment you’d want for your pristine, freshly fermented beer. Unless, of course, you're into doctoring your brew with unknown bacteria strains and suggesting that it's a Belgian such or such....
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Kirkland Helles lager

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Best beer value  K irkland Signature — a name that conjures bulk toilet paper and thirty-pound bags of trail mix — also makes beer. Or rather, they commission beer. And not just any beer. These cans of budgeted bliss are contract brewed by Deschutes Brewery, which, as far as breweries go, is like finding out the gas station hot dog you just ate was actually made by Thomas Keller. Their Helles — that’s “light” in German, though in beer it just means “not IPA” — is clear, golden, and practically screams, “Drink me while wearing cargo shorts.” At 4.5% ABV, it’s light enough to keep you from falling face-first into your lawn after three, yet satisfying enough to make you think, “Huh. Maybe Costco does know what they’re doing.” It’s crisp, bready, ever-so-slightly bitter, and—perhaps most importantly—cheap. $14.60 for a twelve-pack (that’s 276 pesos if you’re playing the home game in Mexico). It even won a gold medal at the 2023 GABF, which makes it, technically, an award-winning b...
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