#26 Bushtoberfest

The Recipe

46% Pilsner 2kg
23% Vienna 1kg
23% Munich 1kg
8% White table sugar 350g
Saaz 30g 3.1% AA @ 50 min
WLP540 Abbey IV Ale Yeast
1.050 OG
1.010 FG after 18 days
ABV 5.24%

I brewed this beer about a year ago, too late for Oktoberfest 2015, but brewed in its honour, say. I'd intended it to be guzzleable in time for Christmas. For whatever reason, Christmas came and went without much of it being drunk, and my perception that it was just too sweet meant that I left about 20 bottles of it sitting on a shelf in the cellar, slowly conditioning, untouched.

Brewing something slightly more authentic for Oktoberfest this year (with Kölsch yeast) piqued my interest in seeing how this had come along all those months later.

This was the first batch I tried clearing with gelatin, and when I first bottled it, the effect was startling and pleasing. For whatever reason – maybe I inadvertently agitated some yeast back into suspension – the sample I tried for this post was as cloudy as a wheat beer.

Still, it had a nice, soft, fluffy head with great retention one year on. I got lovely clove like flavours from the Belgian yeast, and the sweetness has mellowed out leaving a good balance with the bitterness from the hops. Totally inadvertent as it was, it reminds me more of a Belgian witbier than anything else – dry, phenolic and cloudy. Unintentional, but not unpleasant!