Belgian Blonde

Had a Sunday brewday yesterday and really enjoyed myself! I thought I'd share it with you chaps.
I fancied a belgian tripel or a blonde to go with my dubbel that I brewed a few weeks ago... after much thought I plumped for the blonde as I have a thing for Leffe in particular. It's not meant to be a clone although I feel it may be fairly close.

Nice Little Blonde;
23l
OG 1.074
FG 1.015
ABV 7.7
IBU 18.6
EBC 14.5


Recipe;
4kg Pilsen malt
1kg Carabelge
1kg Wheat malt
650g Clear Candi Syrup.

60g Saaz (3.1) @ 90 mins.

Yeast WLP 500 trappist yeast.

So the brewday had a few firsts for me as I'm getting a bit more comfortable with the basics.
The first, first was using my own mill, I bought the Bulldog mill and milled my own grain, having read up in 'Malt' about the best way to crush I set the gap so that the husk was relatively intact and the endosperm was pulverised. It was hard work! next time I'll use a drill!
I milled imediately before I used the grain and, well, my efficiency has shot up to 83% making massively overshoot my numbers but I'm a very happy brewist so far! An increase of up to about 15%, chuffed.
Another bonus was the mash didn't stick, I was a bit worried about that but I guess I got the setting right so I'll stick with it and adjust my numbers for next brewday.

I mashed in a 66* and left it whilst I watched the GP (well done Hamilton)
I came back about two hours later to start the sparge.
I threw in 5l of boiling water to start a mashout and I heated the sparge water to boiling, by the time it runs through the sparge arm and onto the grainbed it cools down to 70 odd so it doesn't extract any tannins or astringent flavours.

I ended up with about 28l of wort which is a bit low for me, I usually collect 30/34l so I'm not sure what happened but no worries.

I boiled up and threw in the Saaz at the start of the boil.

The second first was making my own Belgian Candi sugar which was a piece of cake, for 650g use 650g of table sugar, a pinch of citric acid and heat to between 125/135 and keep it there for 20 mins for hydrolosis to occur. Simple.
That then went in too.
So satisfying to do this at home rather than spend a load more cash on it.

The third first was using yeast I cultivated myself.
I bought a phial of WLP500 and made a 4 litre brew from DME and then split it six ways to end up with six small bottles of the lovely stuff, I then pitched two of these into the wort as it was over 1060 and most advice is to use a starter of 1l once you go over 1060, I thought I'd just use two as I hadn't got around to make a starter.

It's bubbling away nicely now under the stairs so I think it all went well.
The only problem I can see is the long wait beofre its ready....!

Sounds right up my street. Can't wait to hear how it turns out.

Sounds like a great brew day that, especially with the milling and the candi sugar. I like doing new things and learning new stuff. :thumb:

I bottled this last week, it attenuated right down to 1.010, which makes this brew 8.4% abv! Not the 7.7% I was expecting.
This was due to me overshooting my numbers because I milled my own grain right before doughing in.
I hadn't accounted for the increased efficiency.
Ok so it's not a blonde by any stretch, it's more of a tripel now, which doesn't bother me at all!
I tasted the sample and it already tasted bloody good.