Belgian Pale Ale Recipe Critique

Needs more Chinook.

Looks pretty good to me, maybe a little more SO4? Maybe in the range of 1:1.5 Cl:SO4.

 

The recipe looks good to me.

I prefer to use Belgian crystal malts for these types of beers; for example Dingemans Cara 45 Malt.

Cheers!

 

I was actually thinking along those lines as well, like Caramunich 40.

 

. . . or CaraVienne. Nothing wrong with Munich, but consider something like Special B or Aromatic (or both) if you're looking for something distinctive . . . also, maybe a touch less bittering . . .

 

Aromatic in place of the Biscuit and Cara 40 actually sounds like a good idea, just not 13.7%.

 

Your recipe looks very yummy to me, it is not totally accurate to the style though(maybe you don´t mind that). If you want to keep fitting the style i think dry-hopping and IBUs 40 are not suitable for the ´correct ´Belgian Pale Ale style. Instead of adding more sulfate i would add more chlorure, you need to get this beer malty, I would raise biscuit malt a bit , my 2 cents.

 

And then adding Brett to 5 gallons... Right? Otherwise what's the point of doing just enough for 2 1/2 barrels and a 1/6 barrel?

 

First thing I thought when I saw your original recipe. Just stepped up dregs from a fresh bottle last night myself.

 

I didn't read through all the replies but the recipe looks pretty good. Sounds tasty for sure.

 

I have made a similar recipe for several years with various tweaks. Here is what I recommend:
Use cara-Vienne instead of crystal 40. The crystal 40 is too sweet and covers up the delicate hop character associated with fresh DeKonnick/Palm. Cara-Vienne will give you enough caramel character and emphasize the malt character. I think I use 10%. Aromatic malt would be ok, but Special B will be way too dark for this style. I would stick with the biscuit malt. I recommend no more than 30 IBUs, and 25 would be better. Skip the dry hop. I would do a small 10 minute addition and a small 1 minute addition. 8 Oz seems a bit strong. I make 10 -12 gallon batches, and I usually finish with 1 Oz. flavor and aroma for this recipe. Of course, I am trying to recreate the wonderful malty, toasty, character fresh DeKonnick. I love the light Saaz note that makes it more complex though. If you want to make some IPA variant, that may be good too. Adding Brett will make something totally different, but should also be good. You still may want to lower the IBUs. Bitter and funky often don't work well together. I usually try to make a 1.048 gravity beer. It is very drinkable. The Winter Konnick is in the 6% range though, and it is excellent.