Beer Batch #4: een pintje d'Abbey
Experimenting with oak
A simple abbey beer, augmented with vanilla infused oak chips. A batch of 5L was made with:
Pintje d'Abbey
- 1kg Bohemian pilsner malt or any other pils malt, but I still had this around
- 300g Abbey malt
- 40g of Saaz hop (definetly try other hops, but again I still had this lying around)
- a teaspoon of Irish Moss
- a packet of M47 abbey yeast
- about 8g of Oak chips
Hopping schedule
The following hopping schedule is used:
The water was brought to a boil before hopping.
- 20g of hop was added at the start
- 20 g of hop was added after 30 min
- the Irish Moss was added for the last 5 min
with a total cooking time of an hour.
Cooling
The brew was cooled to around 20°C, by submersing a cooler in the cooking pot and letting cold water run trough it for about 15 minutes.
Gravity measurement
- Specific gravity measured: 1.045
- Alcohol percentage expected: 4.6%
This alcohol percentage is quite low for an abbey beer… (they’re usually around 7%). Means we can drink more though :D
Primary Fermentation
A fastbrew fermenter is used for this batch and secondaryduring primary fermentation. Most of the sediment was already removed during the primary by collecting it by gravity.
Secondary fermentation
After about 2 weeks, the brew was transfered to a glass demijohn. The oak pellet was added to the brew and the fermentation was left for two more weeks prior to bottling.
Bottling
- priming sugar added in the bottles for carbonization (sugarcubes)
- bottles filled with laminar flow of pump, with minimal headspace
- bottles were left for at least 2 weeks before tasting (I’m not a patient man)
Taste and looks
- Rich flavour, hint of vanilla, very pleasant
- Nice color, feel, alcohol percentage could be a bit higher.
- Foam could be better, but plenty of CO2
Recommendations future
- Take more notes
- Experiment with other hops
- Make more of this