I (Herman Holtrop) created this page to present fellow homebrewers some information about
the formulation of the recipes of some well-known beers. I'm brewing beer
since 1989 (first extract, later on all-grain) and used to try a lot of my
own recipes (some of which were actually quite gross, other drinkable).
However, I find it challenging to clone or even outbrew some of my favorite
beers. I present you now with some of the information I gathered, and by
doing so, I hope to get some feedback from you as a fellow brewer about
the recipes of some other preferably hoppy brews.
So brew some & have fun!!
You are visitor , this page was last updated january 29, 2002.
Recipe research
Reading through all sorts of beerliterature and crawling around the web,
i have learned some interesting stuff about the way commercial brews are formulated.
I will list some of my findings below.
The information concerns the used grains, the used yeast, and last but not least
the used hops. If some of the information presented is wrong, please write to Herman
The recipe must consist of 90% pilsenermalt and 10% amber malt.
Hops used are possibly Styrian and Goldings, but Saaz could have been used as well.
Yeast
La Chouffe yeast cultured from a bottle of La Chouffe (Mc Chouffe).
You best use a recently bottled Chouffe (The month of bottling used to be on the cork,
but u can also subtract two years from the ultimate date of consumption).
Hops
For this brew I used whole Goldings hops 34,5 g (23 g) and Saaz hops 34,5 g (23 g).
About 30% of the hops were added at the beginning of the boil. A second addition
(another 30%) were added after 25 minutes. After 50 minutes of cooking another 30% were
added, the rest of the hops were added after 20 minutes later, so after 70 minutes of boiling,
they therefore only boiled for 5 minutes.
Miscellaneous
Coreanderseeds, freshly crushed 13 g/ 9 g, half of it was added after 25 minutes boil. The rest was added after the boil, so after 75 minutes. Water treatment: Chouffe is made with Ardennes' water, so if you.ve got hard water you should soften it, possibly by cooking it.
Add the honey while the wort is still cooking, say 5 minutes before the end of the boil.
MASHING
CELCIUS
55
65
70
75
MINUTES
30
60
45
10
Results
OG 1074, FG 1016. I ended up with 13 liter instead of 15 liters, but the results were satisfactory. It's not an exact clone of La Chouffe, but it comes close. To get even closer to the original, you could try dry-hopping or adding more aromahop (at the end of the boil) for the hoparoma. Perhaps the body too should be a little bit more pronounced, so try mashing at a higher temperature. I liked the beer as it was. Happy brewing!
According to Jan van Schaik in his great book (in Dutch unfortunately for all
non-dutch speaking beerfreaks) "Groot Zelf Bierbrouwboek" (The Big homebrewbook) the
original recipe for Hoegaarden witbier is as follows:
Ingredients
Percentage
Pilsener malt
50 %
Raw (unmalted) wheat
40%
Oats
10 %
Coreanderseeds
??
Orangepeels (curacao)
??
Goldings hop
??
Hoegaarden Wit should have an OG if 1048 (12 Plato). Kent Goldings is used for the
"sec"character and Saaz is used for the aroma. Michael Jackson suspected a third
spice is used, perhaps 'komijnzaad' (Dutch) = cuminseed, I've received a tip not to
use too much of this seed because it seems to give a cheesy result, try starting
with a single (1) gram. The wort is fermented by two different strains of yeast, one
for the primary fermentation, the other for the secondary (bottle-) fermentation. To
each bottle a bit of glucose is added together with the second yeaststrain.
Yeast
The first yeast which is used to ferment Hoegaarden Wit, I have no
information about this first yeast. The second yeast however can be cultivated
from a bottle of Hoegaarden (or perhaps even Celis' white if he took his yeaststrains
with him).
Hops
The hops I used are 22 grams of Hallertau (boiled for 60 minutes) and 10
grams of Goldings (boiled for 30 minutes).
Miscellaneous
Hoegaarden makes use of spices as coreander and orangepeels. I used
15 grams freshly crushed whole coreanderseeds and a piece of orangepeel of about 6 grams.
The coreander was boiled for 10 minutes, the peel for 7 minutes. Total boilingtime was
65 minutes.
MASHING
CELCIUS
48
52
63
73
78
MINUTES
10
25
25
30
2
I added the juice of 1 lemon to the mash to obtain a pH of about 5.2.
Results
OG 1048, 14.5 liters. This batch produced a nice whitebeer, which certainly can compete with the Hoegaarden. It resembled the original quite a bit, but the hoparomas were somewhat more spicier than the original.
According to Michael Jackson, De Koninck uses a mixture of Pilsener- and Viennamalts.
The first time i tried to brew De Koninck, I didn't have those available I used Pale- (7 EBC)
and Crystal malt (Cara 150). This brew was a bit to thin (body), and the maltiness wasn't
good either. So later on I brewed according to the recipe above.
Yeast
The original De Koninck yeast is not available as a sediment in De Koninck bottles, however i used to
cultivate it from a bottle, as the yeast was also used to ferment beers of the Amsterdam-based
brewery '''t IJ". A Belgian Ale yeast from sources like Wyeast make a good choice.
If you don't know how to activate a bottle-yeast, try the following : "A primer on yeast culturing" by Brett Lindenbach.
Hops
The hops used for De Koninck are probably Saaz. For my brew however I used Goldings,
which I like for its aroma, but Saaz are probably better to match the De Koninck objective.
Miscellaneous
MASHING
CELCIUS
55
65
70
75
MINUTES
30
30
30
15
The hops were added in three stages. I used a total of 25 gram Goldings, 9 of which boiled for 75 minutes,
8 for 50 minutes and the last 8 for 20-25 minutes. I used a piece of orangepeel (dried curacao-type) of about
5 grams, which boiled for about 20 minutes. Total boiling time was 75 minutes.
Results
This beer was a nice Belgian Ale style beer. It's still not a De Koninck, but hey! I liked this one too. I prefer hoppy beers, and the De Koninck ale is a bit more yeasty tasting. This recipe makes beer of a kind-of hoppy smelling De Koninck style. Next time I'll use even more hops, as the bitterness in the mouth could be better.
Please mail me (English or Dutch) if you have any comments or if you've tried to brew POPERINGS HOMMELBIER (tried the first clone in 2003), which is one of my favorites :
Herman Holtrop [email protected]
, this page was last updated january 29, 2002.
La Chouffe
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