Tafelbier - Low Gravity Brewing

If you follow anything related to homebrewing you will quickly realise that there is definite tendency for homebrewers to brew high ABV beers. Big beers create big impressions and when you want your beers to get noticed, this is often the easiest way to do it - particularly in competition. However, I think brewing big is also a way for mediocre brewers to disguise flaws in their beers and can quite often be a marker for lazy, unadventurous recipe formulation. Who cares about the correct yeast pitching rate, or eliminating off flavours, when you mask it with a couple of dry hop additions?! Sure it might be enjoyable to drink, but are you actually becoming a better brewer?

So as a bit of fun recently, one of the homebrew clubs I'm a member of (Bristol Craft Brewers) lay down a challenge to everyone to brew a low gravity beer for the August meeting. Quite a few people weren't all that interested in taking part, which is fair enough. Another problem with homebrewing is finding the time to do it and brewing an extra low abv beer just doesn't fit in with a lot of peoples' schedules, but hopefully there will be a few examples to try out.

The thing that I find so appealing about brewing a low abv beer is that it's a real challenge to get right. There's going to be a small grain bill so every bit counts. You also need to find a way of increasing the body so it doesn't taste watery. Hop bitterness will be overpowering in a light beer, so you can't just throw hops at it as you might a high gravity IPA. There is also the appealing factor that pretty much any colour/style of beer has the potential to be made into a low abv version. There are so many ways of building body in a beer - higher mash temperature, dextrin malts, crystal malts, yeast choice and so on - that you can choose whichever way suits the style best.

For my effort I took inspiration from a Belgian Tafelbier that was brewed to replace fizzy drinks in school! Yes, those crazy Belgians gave beer to school kids as a response to child obesity. So this is a very light beer brewed with some belgian yeast character, aiming to be refreshing and easy to drink (without getting drunk). Due to time constraints I only had a limited window to brew this between festivals this summer, and I was unable to order in any specific ingredients. This meant the only yeast I could get hold of was Safale T-58, a dry yeast that I haven't used before, and the specialty grains were led by what I already had. Having said that, I was happy with the recipe that I put together, I would've liked to have got hold of a more expressive and less attenuative yeast.

Ingredients

Amt Name %/IBU 1.700 kg Pilsner (2 Row) UK (7.0 EBC) 73.3 % 0.250 kg Vienna Malt (7.0 EBC) 10.8 % 0.150 kg Caramunich I (Weyermann) (100.5 EBC) 6.5 % 0.120 kg Aromatic Malt (51.2 EBC) 5.2 % 0.100 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) 4.3 % 5.00 g Magnum [14.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min 9.3 IBUs 0.50 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) - 3.00 g Peppercorns (Boil 5.0 mins) - 1.0 pkg SafBrew T-58 -

Brew Day - 20/07/2014
O.G. 1.027

I mashed at 69C to increase the amount of unfermentable sugars in the wort for extra body. The first gallon of runnings was boiled for an hour to reduce it to just over half of it's previous volume. This was intended to increase the caramel impression of the beer. The gravity numbers were a little higher than predicted, but I decided not to adjust it as the abv will be so low anyway.

Unfortunately, brewing on one of the hottest days of the year means that an immersion chiller isn't all that effective. The temp dropped quite well initially, but then stayed at around 23C. A check of the mains water temperature (20C) made up my mind that it wasn't going to drop too much more like that, so I ran it off into the fermenter and put that in my new brew fridge! I've set that for 17C, so hopefully it will be able to bring the wort down to a more realistic pitching temperature for the yeast.

The fridge took a few hours but got the wort down to a pitchable temperature of 17.9C by the end of the day. I was a bit concerned that the rehydrated yeast would've been at around 22C (ambient temp) when I pitched it, but there was not a lot I could do about that!

Tafelbier - day 4

23/07/2014
S.G. 1.009

I have to say that the beer still tastes pretty watery. There doesn't seem to be enough malt flavours coming through from such a small grist. Perhaps brewing this with maris otter would've been better. There is a hint of belgian yeast character, but not a huge amount.

I've decided to let the beer warm up now to encourage the yeast to clean up the beer ready to be put on chill. As it's so warm I've just switched off the fridge and opened the door to let it free rise. I've kept the temperature probe switched on though, so I can make sure it doesn't get too warm in there.

I am kind of torn between doing something to the beer to try and make it a bit more exciting, and leaving it to finish as I designed it. I might get a better beer by adding some dry hops and seeing if I can do something about the lack of body... but doesn't that sound a bit like cheating?!

Tafelbier - day 3

22/07/2014
S.G. 1.013

The fridge has worked really well and kept a pretty constant 17C. I understand that this is the low end of the scale for fermentation temperature, but I've read a few reviews of the yeast that suggest it kicks off a lot of bubblegum and banana at higher temperatures. As this is a low gravity quick drinker, I don't really want to be aging it for any time in order to remove off flavours.

At the moment the beer does taste pretty thin and, I guess, watery which isn't exactly what I wanted! But, this is a style brewed to be suitable for school children so I shouldn't be so surprised. I'm still looking forward to the finished beer which, when carbonated as well, should taste quite different.