Category: brewing

My first Belgian witbier was full of ginger, coriander and orange peel, and although the result was unpleasant it didn’t really taste like my favourite witbier, Korenwolf.

This time I managed to find some recipes on Dutch home-brewing forums (sometimes it’s useful to be able to read Dutch!), and I used them as a basis, adding interesting ingredients such as spelt malt, curação orange peel and elderflowers.

The result — Buchwider Bräu ?? — is quite nice, but it’s still not right. I need to add more orange peel and elderflowers, but there’s something else that isn’t right yet. The Dutch recipes called for the addition of flour (yes, real, normal flour), and perhaps this is the missing ingredient?

I need to get hold of some more Korenwolf bottles, however — my memories of it are becoming too hazy for precise flavour comparisons.

I wanted to brew something different for a change, and I opted for a real, alcoholic ginger beer.

It was very simple and cheap to make, but the result is extremely dry — you have to be a real ginger beer lover to enjoy it without adding something to it.

However, a dash of lime cordial turns it into a pleasant and refreshing drink, although at 6% it’s not something you should drink too fast!

I brewed Buchwider Bräu ?? on 7th February. It’s a Berliner Weiße clone, and it’s only just becoming drinkable now, which is completely normal for that type of beer — it’s recommended to leave six months between brewing and drinking. (For the first three months after bottling, it had a horrible sulphuric smell.)

I brewed it used Wyeast’s Activator 3191-PC Berliner-Weisse Blend, and although many people recommend using separate yeast and lactobacillus, this blend seemed to do the trick. Contact me if you’re interested in the recipe!

Berliner Weiße is a sour beer, very similar to a Belgian lambic. Some people like it on its own, but most will want to drink it mit Schuss, i.e., with fruit syrup. On the photo, I’ve added rhubarb syrup, but I can also recommend woodruff syrup, which produces a brilliant green colour and a unique taste!

The beer is extremely weak (only 2.7%), so it’s great for drinking in the sun when you don’t really want to get drunk.

The first beer I ever tried to brew in Scotland was a German Weißbier, ??.

Although I was pleased at the time, I later came to view it as a bit of a failure — it wasn’t really pleasant enough to be enjoyed on its own.

I therefore decided I would try again. I more or less used the same recipe before, but I used a different yeast (Wyeast Bavarian Wheat Blend instead of Wyeast Bavarian Wheat).

I’ve tried one bottle so far, and although it’s somewhat better than my first Weißbier, it’s still not quite right. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it lacks a certain fruitiness.

I guess I’ll need to try again next year!

I completely forgot to blog Buchwider Bräu ?? back in January when I starting drinking it. I’ve just opened my second last bottle (apart from the ones in my “archive”), so it’s high time to write about it.

My ?? is a clone of Caledonian Deuchars IPA, using a recipe from CAMRA’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale.

I think it’s a very pleasant beer, and my dad praised it highly when he and my mum visited us two weeks ago. Unfortunately I haven’t got a chance to compare it directly with the real Caledonian Deuchars IPA — I must do that with my last bottle!