Seeing that I’m on the last bit of my Belgian Specialy Ale I figured it would be a nice time to reflect back on this beer and add a new entry. Before you say anything I wanted to mention that I name my Belgian beers & ciders after Jazz musicians. While I named this beer “Bud” I was completely spacing out and forgot about that other “Bud”. Now let’s get onto the beer.

I had harvested some yeast from a nice little Belgian pale ale I made for my holiday 6-pack. I then created a 1-gallon starter from that yeast from a little 15-minute experiment I did (and made a video). I then used the yeast from that for my big Belgian.

Here are the details for the beer:

Original Gravity: 1.062

1.062 Final Gravity: 1.005

1.005 ABV: 7.2%

7.2% SRM: 18

18 IBU: 18

Grain Bill

9.375# Pilsner Malt

1# Munich Malt

1# Victory Malt

.375# Aromatic Malt

Mash Details

Steep @148 for 75 min

Batch sparge @168 for 10 min

Boil Additions

1oz Stryian Goldings (5.4% AA) @60

1oz Saaz (4% AA) @30

2# Candi Sugar @10 (video on how I did it)

Whirfloc tab @5

Yeast

Abbey Ale (WLP530)

Overall impressions:

Color: Golden amber. My wife, who is not color deficient like I am says, “amber”.

Aroma: Very slight pepper aroma. If you take a big whiff, you almost want to sneeze.

Taste: Since the hops aren’t front and center there is certainly an earthy spicieness. Although the yeast did a very good job of eating the sugars, there’s still a residual sweetness to the beer. This beer doesn’t drink like it’s 7.2%. Another bonus: there is zero aftertaste so it comes off real clean.

Mouthfeel: It has a surprisingly thick mouthfeel for the style.