Belle's Galaxy -- what have I just made?!

[Lord Ester]

Hey there.

So I had some kits and bits and leftovers to brew with a few weeks back, including a can of OS Draught.

After rifling through it all, I ended up with the following:


-Milled 200g med crystal malt, which was steeped for 30 mins in 66C water (1lt)
-In the main pot, I put 2lt of cold water, and stirred in 900g of light dry malt
-The crystal malt was strained after 30 mins and added to the main pot, and all brought to the boil. It was a short boil (only 30 mins).
-At the 20-minute mark, 20g of Galaxy hops were bagged and added
-At 10 mins, yeast for nutrient was added
-At 7 mins another 20g of bagged Galaxy hops went in
-At flameout 1kg of dextrose was added and stirred. This was left for 5 mins.
-That was added to the fermenter, with a tin of [well past use-by] Coopers OS Draught
-Following that, added about 6lt of fridge water and the rest in cold water to 23lt, then stirred vigorously
-I pitched at a slightly warm temp (23C) with a sachet of Mangrove Jack's M27 Belle Saison yeast
-Left it to sit for 2.5 weeks in primary. Ferment was in a swamp cooler, mostly hovering in low-20's.
-4 days prior to bulk-priming (to 2.5 vols CO2) and bottling I dry-hopped with 15g of Galaxy hops

It's only been bottled 5 days, but I'm impatient.

I have no idea what style you would call this, but I cracked one last night and it is a pretty amazing brew. Kind of like "Belgian monk goes on a beach holiday to the tropics". It came out around 7% ABV, so it's no chugger, but it is very refreshing in flavour (I did chill it down to about 4C, so more than you would for most Belgian ales). A little sticky in body, as expected. Colourwise, sort of a deep orange. Not loads of residual bitterness evident. Flavour-wise, I get plenty of grapefruit, rockmelon, passionfruit. My wife reckons she got basil! Who am I to disagree?

I'll definitely be brewing "Belle's Galaxy" again. I reckon the first lot is going to go pretty quickly ...

Would love to know if this is any sort of 'style'. It feels like a hybrid between a Belgian abbey ale and a fruit-driven pale ale, but I don't know a lot about styles and so this is only a guess ...

Cheers!
Lord E.

 

[earle]

Sounds like you've made a highly hopped saison or a saison/pale ale *******.. BJCP guidelines for saisons suggest low to moderate hopping so I think you've taken it outside of those guidelines and perhaps covered up some of the saison yeast characteristic flavours with the hops. Its not a Belgian Abbey but you might be picking up some saison yeast flavours in the background which leads your thinking in that direction.

You could call it a new world saison as new world seems to bring plenty of licence to do whatever you want.

 

[Lord Ester]

Thanks, Earle. That makes sense. I have used Galaxy a bit in the past, and I think flavour-wise there is more going on here than just the hops (of course there is the POR in the OS Draught too). I seem to recall reading somewhere that a lower ferment temp (low 20's) was more likely to produce citric notes from the yeast, and a higher temp (27-ish) was going to give more estery clove / banana, which I don't think we're getting here. You could well be right about the hops overload, but it FEELS to me like the yeast is giving quite a bit to the flavour of this beer. I like your cheeky suggestion of new world saison as a style! Thanks.