Westvleteren Blond

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

strange-steve

Quantum Brewer
Joined
Apr 8, 2014
Messages
6,027
Reaction score
5,798
So next on my "Failed Attempts to Clone Amazing Belgian Beers" list is the often overlooked and underappreciated Westy Blond. I've only had this once but it was a fantastic blond ale, fruity and spicy and much more complex than the simple recipe would suggest (as is often the case for Belgian beers).

I'm planning on brewing this next week so any thoughts on the recipe/method would be appreciated. This is mostly stolen from Michael Tonsmeire's recipe and suggestions for adjustments:

Westvleteren Blond

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20
Total Grain (kg): 4.35
Total Hops (g): 95
Original Gravity (OG): 1.050
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.4 %
Colour (SRM): 3
Bitterness (IBU): 37
Boil Time (Minutes): 75

Grain Bill
----------------
3.0 kg Pilsner (69%)
1.1 kg Pale Malt (25%)
250 g Cane Sugar (6%)

Hop Bill
----------------
15 g Magnum (15.3% AA) @ 60 Minutes

25 g Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.3% AA) @ 15 Minutes

25 g Styrian Golding (3% AA) @ 5 Minutes

15 g Hallertau Mittlefrueh @ Flameout
15 g Styrian Golding @ Flameout

Mash
----------------
Saccharification rest at 64°C for 60 Minutes
Raised to 75°C by decoction for 15 Mins

Water Profile
----------------
Calcium – 80 ppm
Sulphate – 130 ppm
Chloride – 90 ppm
Alkalinity – 15 ppm

Notes
----------------
Fermented with WLP530 - Abbey Ale
Pitch at 18°C and raise to 24° at 1° per day
 
Looks very nice. I used almost the same recipe for a beer that I actually used to grow my St.-Bernardus yeast. I even followed almost the same mash scheme, first at 65°, but I always raise my temperature to around 70°, to get saccharification of the rest of the starches.

I got an SG of 1.008 after one week of fermentation.

A couple of months ago I drank a St.-Bernardus Extra 4, which is probably the same as the WV Blond. A nice dry beer. Since I was already busy growing the St.-B yeast, it came very natural to try to brew the same kind of beer.
 
Yes, harvested from a bottle. I had already fermented 0,75 l beer with it, which turned out very nice after carbonation.

Indeed, I suppose the same. However, take into account that St.-Bernardus has stopped brewing for WV since 1990, so there is a probability that their yeast will have mutated. Maybe I can get to know this next summer. I am planning to make a day trip to St.-Bernardus and vicinity, so maybe I can ask them personally.

I should actually take time to do the following experiment. Around Xmas we can buy here boxes of WV 8 & 12, so I have some which are still fairly young. I should take time to compare these against the St.-B Prior 8 and Abt 12.
 
I actually have compared W12 and Abt 12 side by side. I don't think they are identical by any means as some say, (if I remember rightly I found the Abt a little more roasty for a start) but they're certainly similar and both fantastic. I envy your trip to the brewery, I'd love to do the same some day :hat:
 
Well this is boiling right now with a couple of small adjustments to the recipe above.

I was a little short on pale malt (must keep a better inventory) so I subbed in 200g each of wheat malt and flaked oats, so this is more of an "inspired by" rather than clone. I also decided to skip the decoction for simplicity's sake and instead used a hochkurz mash schedule:
10 mins at 55°
30 mins at 63°
30 mins at 70°
15 mins at 77°

So far so good, other than the fact that this was probably the gummiest and stickiest mash I've ever had, which meant a sparge which was slower than erosion. The bag of pilsner malt was really floury, maybe the HBS was at the end of a sack or something, so I think that's the reason.
 
a sparge which was slower than erosion.
Love the comparison, made me laugh out loud. I had a similar issue today but not enough patience to wait it out so just stir the mash in the raised grain basket which lets it all flow out. Efficiency didn't suffer in the end.

Sounds like another tasty brew.
 
Hochkurz - nice word, everyday is a school day.
It's a mash schedule I'm partial to for Belgian and German beers, apparently good for increasing maltiness and fermentability.

I had a similar issue today but not enough patience to wait it out so just stir the mash in the raised grain basket which lets it all flow out. Efficiency didn't suffer in the end.
I actually did the same, it ran free for about 3 planck units before solidifying like concrete again. I've never seen a mash like this before, even when using stupid amounts of oats, rye, and wheat.

Like yourself though efficiency didn't suffer, it was actually considerably higher than expected. I can't seem to get a consistent efficiency with the GF, it varies from low 70s to mid 80s.
 
It's a mash schedule I'm partial to for Belgian and German beers, apparently good for increasing maltiness and fermentability.

I actually did the same, it ran free for about 3 planck units before solidifying like concrete again. I've never seen a mash like this before, even when using stupid amounts of oats, rye, and wheat.

Like yourself though efficiency didn't suffer, it was actually considerably higher than expected. I can't seem to get a consistent efficiency with the GF, it varies from low 70s to mid 80s.
It's an interesting mash schedule, I've used it a couple of times but can't say how it differed since I haven't done any side by sides, just makes predicting FG a bit of a pain.

Very weird, the couple of times (3 now i think) I've had a stuck sparge the second I break the mass near the bottom all the wort rapidly drains though. You're almost sounds like it went porridgy... You'd think that floury malt would just fall through the grain basket (then burn on the element...).

Have you got any trend data on your efficiency? I seem to hit 72 - 78% on most 15L batches now and that goes up to low-mid 80s on 23L batches. I've had a couple of 66%ers but those have either been early batches were I didn't adjust for large grain bills or a recent wheat beer which got a terrible crush.
 
It's an interesting mash schedule, I've used it a couple of times but can't say how it differed since I haven't done any side by sides, just makes predicting FG a bit of a pain.

Very weird, the couple of times (3 now i think) I've had a stuck sparge the second I break the mass near the bottom all the wort rapidly drains though. You're almost sounds like it went porridgy... You'd think that floury malt would just fall through the grain basket (then burn on the element...).

Have you got any trend data on your efficiency? I seem to hit 72 - 78% on most 15L batches now and that goes up to low-mid 80s on 23L batches. I've had a couple of 66%ers but those have either been early batches were I didn't adjust for large grain bills or a recent wheat beer which got a terrible crush.
I stuck my numbers into excel to see if there was any trend. I took out some of the unusual ones (no sparge or stupidly large grain bills) and plotted graphs:

ThXTTVo.jpg


Not really much of a trend, averaging 76% BHE with a range of 14%. No big deal really, but it'd be nice to have some consistency.
 
Just a couple of thoughts. Would it be useful to plot against mash efficiency as well as BHE? It may highlight a variable post mash, or confirm that extraction is the issue.

Also, are the plotted mash temps the final step temperature? Is there any variables in the dough in temperature or lowest step temperature? I wonder if your issue is glucan related and whether a short acid rest as a default, would help.

https://byo.com/article/the-science-of-step-mashing/
 
Just a couple of thoughts. Would it be useful to plot against mash efficiency as well as BHE? It may highlight a variable post mash, or confirm that extraction is the issue.
It might be but I don't have any data on mash efficiency, I don't always check it and when I do I don't keep notes on it, although maybe I should start doing that.

Also, are the plotted mash temps the final step temperature? Is there any variables in the dough in temperature or lowest step temperature? I wonder if your issue is glucan related and whether a short acid rest as a default, would help.
About half of those were single step mash (with mash-out), the rest were step mashed (usually Hochkurz) so for the graph I used the main saccharifaction rest, usually 63c. I checked to see if there was any trend in single step vs multistep, but again no pattern.
 
I stuck my numbers into excel to see if there was any trend. I took out some of the unusual ones (no sparge or stupidly large grain bills) and plotted graphs:

ThXTTVo.jpg


Not really much of a trend, averaging 76% BHE with a range of 14%. No big deal really, but it'd be nice to have some consistency.
Sort of looks sensible, although there is a lot of randomness. You would expect efficiency to decline as you try to get a stronger beer and also as the mash temps increase from 63 up towards 70C. It is also well known that the efficiency sweet spot for the GF is around 4.5 kg of grain, plus or minus 10% or so.

An optimist can see these themes in the squiggles (after a fashion, at least).
 
Yeah, if you ignore the two 5.25 kg ish grain bills then the BHE vs grist mostly trends down with increasing weight, except for the 2 small grain bills at the start. But that is a very variable distribution...
 
It might be interesting (in an unnecessary, very nerdy way) to track these over the next lot of batches and see if I can find some sort of reasonable fit trend line. Could be mildly useful for estimating BHE.
 
Currently 5 days in and gravity is down from 1.059 to 1.010 meaning AA of 82% and 6.4% abv. Aroma is very fruity, quite a lot of banana actually, with a pleasant spiciness.
 
Bottled this today at an FG of 1.010 and it tasted really promising from the trial jar, I'm hoping this could be a good one.
 
Looks nice. I bottled mine (the one with the St.-Bernardus yeast) Friday, and I also got FG of 1.010.
 
I'm having the first sample of this tonight, about 2 weeks after bottling. It's not quite fully carbed and there is a slight green apple flavour which I hope will fade with a bit of conditioning. Otherwise pretty good, nice bready malt flavours, some lovely yeasty esters, clean hop flavours and an enjoyable little hint of alcohol in the finish. I think in a couple more weeks this'll be good. I've used this yeast twice now and I really love it, this'll be my go to Belgian yeast I think.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top