Brewery competition help

Every day monks brew for their personal consumption using 3787 . . . these are professional brewers who know what they are doing. The 3522 will work, but none of these pros use it . . . you decide.

Understand, this is not a boring beer. If the yeast is fresh & healthy and you manage the temp correctly it's dynamic. Vikeman normally knows what he's talking about, but he's wrong here suggesting you add biscuit/aromatic. Any decent Continental pilsner malt and either Sty Golding or Saaz or even a German noble hop (in a pinch) works. Bittering doesn't matter (I use hop extract). I would not whirlpool with Citra. Oh yeah, for water suggest the Beerse profile from Beersmith, (Beerse is adjacent to Malle which is just east of Westmalle).

You will stand out just fine when the Westmalle aroma of your Paters is detected across the table . . . followed by the noble pilsner taste. There's a reason this style has been around for centuries.

 

It is a tough call. You have to get yourself into the psychology of the judges. Since I am in no position to really know the minds of the judges, all I can do is encourage you to brew a great beer, regardless of what style you choose!

 

The cool thing about the WLP515/Belgian Ale DK/Wyeast 3655 Schelde is it produces that biscuit note on it’s own. One of these strains (I’m not sure they’re all exactly the same isolate) is supposed to be the New Belgium yeast, or very similar.

 

I have never heard this about a yeast producing a biscuit note on its own. What is the source of this info?

 

I’ve brewed with it and can attest to it, as well as the Omega yeast description. I’ve made two Belgian Pales in the last few months. First with 3655, latest with Omega Belgian Ale DK. Haven’t brewed with wlp515 but it’s supposed to be the same strain as DK. Sourced from De Konick.

 

I'd say we have different visions for the beer and may actually be chasing slightly different styles; Traditional Patersbier vs a more modern Single interpretation. IMO a small amount of biscuit or aromatic would make the malt pop a little more, which is something I would do if I expected to be competing in what effectively is a BOS round against a sea of IPAs.

 

I just made a dubbel using both of these. Seems great to me. I was going to do two 5 gallon batches using the two different strains but then my old lady bought me a 14 gallon sstech chronical. Hooray for me. Anyhow instead of two five gallon batches I just chucked them both in he fermenter for one big 10 gallon batch. It went from 1.063 to 1.011 in a week at 72*

 

I guess Omega says something like this, but I am skeptical. I suspect it is more that it is a clean yeast, and therefore doesn't produce esters and phenols that detract from experience the biscuit flavors from the malt. But I've never used the yeast, so I I'll reserve further judgment.

 

I'm getting quite into the combination of Huell Melon with Belgian abbey yeasts. The hop character seems to play nicely with the yeast esters, and it seems to put an interesting twist on things while being a bit more subtle and less cliched than just bunging loads of Citra in everything.