Biere d'Avril biere de garde
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 12:36PM An amped-up tweak of Northern Brewer's Biere de Garde kit, brewed, garded (lagered), and split: half for now, half for Thanksgiving. As seen in Episode 13.
A criminally-underappreciated beer style, in my estimation (Saison and Bock, together at last!), and, according to Garret Oliver, top-notch with roast turkey. Seeing as how T-giving is my favorite holiday, I vowed to not be without it this year. Brewed it extra-hefty in spring to withstand and improve over the long, cold road to November.
But as it so happens, Biere de Garde is traditionally, like its Belgian cousin the Saison, a provision beer for the fermentation-unfriendly summer months. And at the time of this writing, it's still summer, citizens. So ... keg for now, bottles for later. Have cake - eat it too.
Biere d'Avril
Blonde biere de garde
5 gallons, all-grain
OG: 1.078 FG: 1.012
Grist:
- 10 lbs Belgian Pils
- 2.5 lbs German Munich 20 EBC
- 0.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic malt
Mash:
- 148°F for 90"
- 170°F for 5"
Boil:
- 1 oz Palisade @ 60"
- 1 oz Styrian Goldings @ 30"
- 12 oz table sugar @ 5"
Fermentation:
- White Labs WLP072 French Ale, 1000 ml starter w/ stir plate
- 14 days @ 64°F
- 90 days @ 35°F
No WLP072?
Yeah, me neither, now ... that Platinum Strain ship has sailed. My year-round-available choices would be WLP008 or WLP029.
Reader Comments (4)
Did you do anything special to bottle condition this? After lagering that long, did you add any yeast at bottling time?
Sometimes I add fresh yeast at bottling and sometimes I use a trick from Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide, which is to briefly jam the racking cane to the bottom of the carboy to pick up some of the precipitated, dormant yeast cells and make sure they get into the bottling bucket. Both have worked for me, YMMV - fresh yeast seems like more of a sure bet. For this batch of BdG I did the Miller method and the bottles have a layer of dusty sediment already (~ 5 days).
What about using the Wyeast 3711 french saison yeast? Anyone tried this?
@Don - not with this exact grist; I bet it would be good but different (drier, nose/mouth less malty and more fruity and tart-citric). If you try it, let us all know how it turns out!