leffe blonde

[ArmChair]

Had the best half of leffe blonde tonight, any one got a good clone for it?

[seymour]

Choosing my words carefully here:
We Jim's members have mixed-feelings about Kristen England (aka mashweasel, BJCP director, responsible for the Mr. Malty Yeast Strain Chart...) due to past mutually nasty arguments with Graham Wheeler...BUT he insists this clone recipe is based on inside information:

Abbaye de Leffe S.A./InBev - Leffe Blond
OG: 1064
ABV: 6.6%
Fermentables: 74.4% Belgian Pilsener Malt, 18.6% Corn Sugar, 7% Aromatic Malt
Hops: Hallertau for early bittering, Saaz for late aroma, to 25 IBU
Colour: hazy golden
Yeast: originally a proprietary Belgian ale strain, sources say InBev substituted a German Weizen yeast! Nonetheless, Kristen recommends Wyeast 3463 at the cool end of the ideal fermentation range.

I agree with you, Leffe Blond is good, but it's fairly bland as Belgian ales go. For this reason, it's often a "gateway drug" to the good stuff.

If you like Leffe Blond, you'll love my recently posted Belgian Singel recipe. Smaller ABV, but bigger flavour. Feel free to dial it up 6.6% ABV, if you prefer. For that matter, tinker with it all you like, that's the name of the game in Belgian brewing.

SEYMOUR BELGIAN SINGEL

This recipe is my idea of the perfect Belgian Singel, along the lines of the table-strength beer the Trappist monks keep to themselves. They go by various nicknames: Patersbier, Monks' Beer, Petit, Dorée, Refter, etc.

Some coriander, fresh lemongrass and lime leaves in the late boil are awesome, or else you can keep it basic to simply showcase the hops and yeast.

6 US Gallons = 5 Imperial Gallons = 22.7 Litres

GRAINBILL
68% = 6.29 lbs = 2.85 kg, Two-Row Pale or Pilsener Malt
15% = 1.39 lbs = 630.5 g, Vienna Malt
15% = 1.39 lbs = 630.5 g, Wheat (malted or not)
2% = .19 lb = 86.2 g, Steel-Cut Oats, lightly toasted

MASH:
classic DeClerk multi-step mash or single-step: 90 min at 152°F/66.7°C

HOPS
.45 oz = 12.8 g, Magnum, 90 min
1 oz = 28.3 g, German noble of your choice: Hallertau, Tettnang, Saaz, etc., 30 min
1 oz = 28.3 g, distinctive aroma hop of your choosing: Citra, Galaxy, Rakau, etc., at flame-out
1 oz = 28.3 g, distinctive aroma hop of your choosing: Citra, Galaxy, Rakau, etc., dry hops added to secondary fermentor

BOIL for 90 min. Add a pinch of gypsum at the beginning. Add wort chiller and Irish Moss at 15 min remaining.

YEAST:
Safbrew T-58 or Wyeast 3942/De Dolle strain or Mauri Weiss at warm end of ideal ferm temps.

STATS assuming 78% mash efficiency and 80% yeast attenuation:
OG: 1046
FG: 1009
ABV: 4.8%
IBU: 35
COLOUR: 4°SRM/8°EBC

[alecwallace]

From brewing classic styles, Lefty Blonde

72% Pilsner
14% Cane Sugar
9% Wheat
5% Aromatic

Hallertau 4%aa, 60 mins, 25IBU

500/1214/T-58 yeast

Mash at 66c, ferment at 18c rising to 20c.

[Barley Water]

Humm...I always thought that Mr. Malty was the great Jamil Zanashef, not Mr. England. To my knowlege (although I have not met the gentleman myself) everyone pretty much likes Jamil, I have never heard anyone say a bad thing about the guy what so ever.

The great thing about making a Single is that you can use the beer to grow up a yeast cake for a more substantial Belgian brew. I made one last year for that reason and won a metal in a very big contest, I was surprised and pleased. If I remember right it was almost straight pils malt and maybe just a little character malt but not much. I do remember the yeast was WLP550 and it was a fun beer to drink. The only suggestions for improvement contended that I try and dry the beer out more so this year I swapped out some of the base malt for some jaggery (and it dried it out all right). It probably won't win jack this year but that's ok, I still liked drinking it.

[seymour]

Humm...I always thought that Mr. Malty was the great Jamil Zanashef, not Mr. England. To my knowlege (although I have not met the gentleman myself) everyone pretty much likes Jamil, I have never heard anyone say a bad thing about the guy what so ever.

I've never heard a bad thing about Jamil Zainasheff, either. Except perhaps that he's a bit long-winded at times on his radio show, but that's innocent enough. I agree with you, he deserves the high praise he receives.

I now see what you mean about the Mr. Malty website mainly referring to Jamil, sorry about the confusion. But I'm definitely talking about Kristen England, aka mashweasel, and he's responsible for the well-known and much-maligned Yeast Strain cross-reference charts on the Mr. Malty website, much of the data he claimed to have gathered while building the BJCP curriculum. http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast-tools.php

Whatever the case, the Leffe Blond clone recipe I posted is Kristen's.

[Barley Water]

That's funny about the radio show. My take on those was that they were a cross between one of those old Cheech and Chong routines and something out of Wayne's World (you know "party on"). Jamil and Tasty would get going and the longer they went the crazier it became due to the sampling. My understanding was that they taped several of those shows back to back so I am sure it got rather brutal near the end of a taping session.

Yeah, Mashweasel came up with that chart (which has made the rounds by the way), the yeast vendors don't seem to want to go there. I personally think it's useful but at the end of the day, every brewer needs to find a few strains he/she likes and use them a lot so as to learn their character. My problem is that I brew many different styles so I'm always switching strains, "jack of all trades, master of none". Especially with lager yeast I have not even at this late date come across what I would call my favorite but I'll keep working at it.

[dean_wales]

Choosing my words carefully here:
We Jim's members have mixed-feelings about Kristen England (aka mashweasel, BJCP director, responsible for the Mr. Malty Yeast Strain Chart...) due to past mutually nasty arguments with Graham Wheeler...BUT he insists this clone recipe is based on inside information:

Abbaye de Leffe S.A./InBev - Leffe Blond
OG: 1064
ABV: 6.6%
Fermentables: 74.4% Belgian Pilsener Malt, 18.6% Corn Sugar, 7% Aromatic Malt
Hops: Hallertau for early bittering, Saaz for late aroma, to 25 IBU
Colour: hazy golden
Yeast: originally a proprietary Belgian ale strain, sources say InBev substituted a German Weizen yeast! Nonetheless, Kristen recommends Wyeast 3463 at the cool end of the ideal fermentation range.

This is interesting. All roughly as expected but there is no wheat malt? Every other single recipe I have seen contains it.

I would be grateful of any input on that front. It would be a damn sight easier to clear without the wheat!

Dean.

[seymour]

Yeah, no wheat. Some wheat would be true-to-style for Belgian Blondes, but Leffe Blond isn't.

Time for another Seymour diatribe (as always, feel free to fast-forward to the end):

The problem with a lot of online clone recipes is that homebrewers give the big guys too much credit. They figure something called Belgian Blonde--perhaps the world's best selling Belgian Blonde--ought to follow the best-practices for brewing Belgian Blonde. And who can blame them? The big guys spend a lot of marketing money perpetuating myths, making vague and misleading statements, etc. Living in St. Louis, I still enjoy taking the Budweiser Brewery tour sometimes for the free beer at the end, and to laugh my head off at all their preposterous lies.

The clone recipes you describe would certainly produce very good Belgian Golden/Blond ales (most likely better than Leffe Blonde in many ways) but they don't take into consideration fact-based research into the cost-cutting schemes of AB-InBev's so-so counterfiet. Did you notice my discovery that AB-InBex doesn't even ferment Leffe with a Belgian yeast strain?!

I sometimes get really worked up about this stuff, the inaccuracies, the deterioration of history, degredation of regional identity, the dumbing-down of tastes, etc. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to what you really want to accomplish, right? If you enjoy Leffe Blonde (and I do, despite everything I've said, corn can produce tasty beer) and want to clone that specific brew, I'm saying you should follow the cheats to get as close as possible. However, if you want to brew the best possible Belgian Blonde Ale, follow the best-practices.

Similarly, Bud Light is the world's best-selling "Pilsener" and John Smith's Extra Smooth is the world's best-selling "English Bitter." Thank god the rest of the world isn't brewing to their actual specifications.

See also these official Leffe/AB-InBev sources:

"The ingredients are light malt, corn, water, hops and yeast, which give it a bright golden colour with dazzling reflections."

"Spring water, malted barley and corn come together to give Leffe its sunny golden yellow color."

"The ingredients are light malt, corn, water, hops and yeast, which give it a bright golden colour..."

Just include some store-bought corn grits or even corn syrup for that matter, and call it a day.

[zgoda]

Thanks, Seymour, that summarizes the whole cloning idea. And already knowing what you pointed out, I'm not into cloning - I always want my beer to be better than what I can buy. Leffe is not the one of blondes I'd try to clone, there are many better ones.

For blondes I prefer equally simple bill, only pilsner malt and glucose. If one worries about foam, carapils to the rescue. It gives smooth flavour like regular pilsner, without wheat tart notes.

[Pinto]

Thanks, Seymour, that summarizes the whole cloning idea. And already knowing what you pointed out, I'm not into cloning - I always want my beer to be better than what I can buy..

A English sports car company called AC created a good looking, straight six 2.0 litre sports car called the Ace in the late 1950's It was a nice car.



Then, in 1961, A Texan Yahoo by the name of Carol Shelby got his hands on one.....




Personally, I have no problem with starting with a run-of-the-mill clone recipe - the pleasure comes from chopping it about and shoehorning a brewing '427 in the front of it !

[Barley Water]

Texan Yahoo

What? I think the great nation of Texas has been defamed. Actually, those pictures illustrate perfectly how we operate over here, take somebody else's idea and screw with it (and apparently that's Pinto's modus operendi as well, good on ya). Incidentally, in regards to the recipe referenced above, regardless of what you think of Inbev, the relavant question is, do you like it? If so I personally would start with Jamil's formulation and see what happens. After that, I would for sure start playing with it because after all, if you want a Leffe you can just go out and buy one, why not make something a bit unique?

A couple of other things; first of all in my opinion if you are going to add sugar why not take the opportunity to add flavor as well? If you use table sugar, you'll dry out the beer but won't add much flavor-wise. I like using jaggery which you can get at ethnic markets around here. It's a bit darker but it has sort of a buttery smooth flavor, pretty nice I think. Secondly, if Imbev is using a wheat beer yeast to make Leffe that actually doesn't bother me. In my opinion wheat beer yeasts and many Belgian strains behave much the same. Spend some time playing around with WLP300 and WLP500 and see if you don't agree. Both are extremely fruity, both will produce bananna and clove flavors in spades given the right handling and both will rip the top off a carboy as they are violent fermentors. The thing about both strains that is most similar however is the fact that they are extremely sensitive to fermentation temprature and a few degrees on way or the other will change the taste of the beer, sometimes dramatically.

Oh, one more thing; if you don't like the extremely fruity effect you get with WLP500 (supposedly the Chimay strain) try WLP530 (supposedly Westmalle). I have made several Dubbels over the years all with WLP500 and just for fun tried WLP530 on my last batch, much more restrained and a much different beer (but very nice). I have also tried WLP550 as well (but on in a Dubbel) very interesting stuff, I'll use it again. Finally for a 1.065 O.G. beer you will want to make a starter; why not make an Abbey Single then use the yeast cake for the serious stuff?

[seymour]

Lots of excellent points, as usual, Barley Water...except IT'S NOT JAMIL'S RESEARCH/RECIPE, IT'S KRISTEN ENGLAND'S!!!

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?p=486113

I never should've confused matters with the "Mr. Malty" comment

[jonnyt]

Also if you want the Chimay strain use cheap and cheerful T-58, don't bother with a starter just use two packets!

[seymour]

But if you want a more accurate Leffe Blonde clone, use a German wheat yeast such as Mauri Weiss, Safbrew WB-06, Danstar Munich, etc.

[Barley Water]

Oh I was actually referring to Allecwallace's post, I have had really good luck with Jamil's recipes (but I don't know how close to Leffe Jamil's beer really is).

To change the subject slightly though, have you guys had good luck using the various dried yeasts now available? When I make American stuff where I want a clean fermentation (and that's not very often although I have an APA dry hopping right now) I have recently had good luck with the dry stuff (I think it's US05 of something like that). Since the resuts are good why not save some trouble and expense? Otherwise, I always use the liquid yeasts, make a starter and all that. Is the dried Belgian and wheat beer yeast good?