Well I decided to take a chance on a genre of beer I’ve never even tasted before… I think I made a mistake.

Recipe Source: Ontario Beer Kegs

Beer Specifications

Beer Name: OBK Belgian Table Beer Beer Style: Belgian Table Beer Recipe Type: All Grain Batch Size: 5.25 gallons / 19.9 litres Estimated SRM: 3° Estimated IBU: 26 Estimated OG: 1.037 Estimated FG: 1.007 Estimated ABV: 4%

Grain Bill/Fermentables

LBS FERMENTABLES 6 Pilsner 1 Toasted Flaked Wheat

Hops

OZ TIME HOPS 1 60 min Hallertauer

Yeast

# YEAST 1 SafBrew T-58 Specialty Ale

Fermentation Schedule

21 days Primary 7-14 days Bottle Conditioning Optimal Fermentation Temperature: 59-68°F / 15-20°C

Place fermenter in stable temperature, out of the light.

Directions

Mash Temperature: 150°F / 65.5°C Mash Time: 60 min Strike Water Volume: 4.5 gallons / 17 litres Sparge Water Volume: 4.5 gallons / 17 litres Boil Duration: 90 min

I’ll admit that before starting this brew I was searching for something different to try. Something you probably couldn’t find in the local store, something that only a homebrewer could easily make happen. Well… I found something alright.

The recipe was simple, ingredients very cheap and the brew day was really straight forward. I let it ferment for 3 weeks before bottling it with a lower carbonation target to try and keep it within style. My original gravity (OG) reading was 1.030 and my final gravity (FG) reading was 1.004 for an ABV of 3.41% which was about half a percent below target. So how did it turn out?

First thing: the smell. The smell could be kindly described as… odd? It’s almost a sour smell but with hints of pepper. The pepper makes sense as the speciality yeast T-58 claimed to impart something to that effect but the sour is what really threw me off. It could easily be mistaken for the smell of a not-so-sour sour beer of some kind.

The taste is just… strange. It’s slightly tart up front but then not much of anything beyond that. Almost no real after taste at all. I even got a few other people to try it and all of them said basically the same thing. It’s not terrible but it’s so inoffensive to the point where it’s so boring it’s almost not even worth drinking. It’s really hard to explain this beer, and I’m having a hard time putting it into words, but it’s just off in some way that makes it tough to drink.

To be honest I think I’ve got a bit of a dud here which is a shame considering I have a substantial amount of it bottled… I know the common saying in the homebrewing community is to never pour out a beer and to just give it more time, but to be honest I’ve already given it more than a month in the bottle and it hasn’t gotten any better :(. Next time I may have to be a bit more discerning with my choice of homebrew recipes.