Looking for some unique and tasty beers? Sick of the run-of-the-mill big beer brands?
If you head to your provider of brewed or fermented liquids (known as bottle shops here in Australia), you'll often find, sitting proudly on display, beers or ales that have the word Trappist on them. Up until recently, I had a very poor understanding of what this meant.
As it turns out, these are quite literally beers that are made by Trappist Monks. And the Trappist Monks have even formed an association to ensure that the word "Trappist" in their logos or product names, can only be used by other Trappist Monks who abide by the rules laid out by the association.
In 1997, eight Trappist abbeys from Belgium (Orval, Chimay, Westvleteren, Rochefort, Westmalle and Achel), Netherlands (Koningshoeven) and Germany (Mariawald) founded the International Trappist Association (ITA) which prevents non-Trappist commercial companies from abusing the Trappist name. This monks created a logo which is assigned to their products (such as cheese, beer and wine). For the logo to be applied to these products, the producers must respect precise production criteria. For the beers, these criteria are the following:
- The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist abbey, by or under control of Trappist monks.
- The brewery, the choices of brewing, and the commercial orientations must obviously depend on the monastic community.
- The economic purpose of the brewery must be directed toward assistance and not toward financial profit.
This association even has a legal standing, and its logo gives the consumer (us) some guarantees about the products.
My Trappist Monk beer of choice is Chimay Blue and I recently started making my first brew to see if I could replicate the likeness of this fantastic beer.
So, what is the recipe that I have used to make this beer?
The ingredients you'll need are:
- 2 x 1.5kg containers of Light Liquid Malt
- 250g brewers honey
- 50g crushed black malt
- 50g Hersbrucker Hop pellets
- 25g Goldings Hop pellets
- Safbrew T-58 yeast
- An optional 400g of soft brown sugar
Method
Bring 1 litre of water in a pot to approximately 70 degrees (celsius). Add the crushed grain and steep for 20 - 30 minutes. Strain the liquid into a second pot. Into this second pot, rinse the grain with hot water until it runs clear and you have roughly 3 - 4 litres of liquid in the pot. You can now discard the grain.
In your second pot, add one can of the light malt, your honey and brown sugar and bring to the boil. Once boiling, add the Hersbrucker and Goldings hops and simmer gently for 35 minutes. Once the 35 minutes is up, remove the pot from heat and steep for 15 minutes. Strain the liquid into your cleansed and sanitised fermenting container.
Put the unopened second can of of light liquid malt into hot water for 10 minutes to make it runnier. Once you've done this, open and add to your fermenter. Stir the malt into the liquid well.
Bring the volume of your brew to a final volume of 15 litres with cold water. Stir well. Add the yeast when the temperature of the liquid reaches approximately 24 degrees (celsius). The liquid should be brewed between 18 to 24 degrees celsius so use a heat pad if your room temperature is likely to be low.
All in all, this is a pretty simple process once you're familiar with how home brewing works.
I'll update you with the end product once I have bottled and aged the beer sufficiently (about 4 weeks of bottle fermentation at a minimum).
Have you tried making a similar recipe? How did it work out?
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