[homoeccentricus]

Had my first glass of the American blonde tonight. It's a bit bland. But it's less than 4% ABV, and no crazy amounts of hops, so maybe that's normal. I'll need to drink another glass to verify.

Hm, not sure yet. Maybe I'll have another one, just for science.

[hopfenundmalz]

Oh I'd say Rochefort is pretty large, especially if we're getting their beer over here en masse. Which reminds me, I have a bottle of Rochefort 10 in the fridge...mmmmm might have to drink that tonight. Election night! Which heaping pile will it be!!!

If you consider 18,000 hL/ a year large. That is ~15,000 bbl/year. The brewery does not look large from the other side of the gate.

[beersk]

Oh I'd say Rochefort is pretty large, especially if we're getting their beer over here en masse. Which reminds me, I have a bottle of Rochefort 10 in the fridge...mmmmm might have to drink that tonight. Election night! Which heaping pile will it be!!!

If you consider 18,000 hL/ a year large. That is ~15,000 bbl/year. The brewery does not look large from the other side of the gate.

Sure, small operations can have low oxygen brewing practices. Hard to say in this case.

[reverseapachemaster]

Had my first glass of the American blonde tonight. It's a bit bland. But it's less than 4% ABV, and no crazy amounts of hops, so maybe that's normal. I'll need to drink another glass to verify.

But does it have it?

[homoeccentricus]

Had my first glass of the American blonde tonight. It's a bit bland. But it's less than 4% ABV, and no crazy amounts of hops, so maybe that's normal. I'll need to drink another glass to verify.

But does it have it?

I am Belgian. We Belgians don't believe in it. But it certainly does not taste like oxidized phenolic soup. Which I cannot say of 90+% of the homebrews I tasted this year. Unfortunately I've never had a commercial American Blonde, so it's difficult to compare. Some of the malt flavor may or may not have been scrubbed out.

[Hand of Dom]

I tried some of the LODO techniques on the Rochefort clone I brewed last weekend.  No idea how it'll turn out (came in a little low on gravity and high in volume), but I definitely noticed that the house wasn't full of the smell of malt which it usually does when I brew.

Any results on this one? I plan to brew a low oxygen version of my Rochefort 4 "clone" in a couple of weeks.

I opened a bottle last weekend, but it was completely undercarbonated.  It tasted OK, but I didn't drink the whole glass.  I'll try another one this weekend and report back.

Just asking because many Belgian brewers believe HSA to be a hoax. Not sure about the good monks from Rochefort though. And I'm very curious what the influence of low oxygen brewing is on Belgian styles.

Tried another bottle this evening, much better carbonation this time.  It's a nice beer, not the Rochefort clone I was trying, but reasonably close.  I'm not getting any sulphur or salty taste.  Having only followed this recipe once previously, when I used WLP530 rather than WLP540, I'm not sure I'm in the best position to comment on whether the low oxygen approach improved the beer, but it certainly doesn't seem to have adversely effected it (unless it was to blame for the low attenuation).  Having used the yeast scavenging approach to initially deoxygenating the mash/sparge water, the additional effort involved in following the low oxygen approach isn't onerous, and I think I'd use it again.  I only really followed the hot side steps, and use a copper CFC, so how successful my interpretation was, I don't know.

[homoeccentricus]

Had my first glass of the American blonde tonight. It's a bit bland. But it's less than 4% ABV, and no crazy amounts of hops, so maybe that's normal. I'll need to drink another glass to verify.

But does it have it?

Gave it another five days to properly carbonate and settle, and even with my half-ass electric biab I can now say confidently that I like it a lot. Much fuller than it was before, clean, crisp, hoppy, very good foam.

Just one downside: I asked my girlfriend whether this was my best beer ever, and she said "It's good but I couldn't say because I don't remember the previous ones."

[brewinhard]

Had my first glass of the American blonde tonight. It's a bit bland. But it's less than 4% ABV, and no crazy amounts of hops, so maybe that's normal. I'll need to drink another glass to verify.

But does it have it?

Just one downside: I asked my girlfriend whether this was my best beer ever, and she said "It's good but I couldn't say because I don't remember the previous ones."

Ha!  That is great.