Belgian Golden Ale

I was doing some reading last week and found a recipe for a Belgian Golden Ale (about the middle of the page, second recipe), and I figured that I have some T-58 yeast, so I'd give something like it a shot.  I don't have the exact hops to match the recipe, so I just used some Czech Saaz that I had available.

Brew Day:  21 Dec 2015

Partial Mash:
8 oz Rahr Pale Ale Malt
4 oz GoldPils
3 oz Gambrinus Honey Malt
1 oz CaraPils

*I followed my normal partial mash process.

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME (@ 60 min)
3.5 oz corn sugar (@ 60 min)
 7 g Czech Saaz (@ 60 min)

Yeast: T-58

*I cooled the wort and pitched the yeast using my usual process

12 hrs after pitching yeast

Addendum, 22 Dec: It's been about 12 hrs since I pitched the yeast, and the bubbles flowing through the blow-off tube into the bottle are beating out quite the rhythm!  I also noticed that the color lightened out a bit...with the honey malt, the partial mash wort came out a little darker than I would've liked, but I knew it would lighten up a bit in once I added it to the boil with the DME.  Overall, the yeast seems to be pretty happy...you can't see in the picture to the right, but there thousands of little bubbles rising up through the fermenter to the foam at the top.

Addendum, 4 Jan: Bottled tonight, with just a bit more than an ounce of table sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of boiling water.  Ended up with 9 bottles.  I'm looking forward to trying this one...it's not the first time I've used the T-58 yeast, but I'm looking at bottling some variation of this recipe (or a hefeweizen) near the summer in small soda bottles, so I can take them with us while tubing.

Addendum, 19 Jan: Tasting.  Wow, this one turned out really well!  Nice golden color, good carbonation, very light lacing.  Smells and tastes like a Belgian ale.  On the next rendition, I'm going to take a look at backing off of the malt bill for the partial mash just a bit, and do a first wort hop with about 7 g of German Perle hops.  The T-58 yeast handled the extra sugar very well; by the time I got to the bottom of my glass, I knew I'd had a Belgian-style ale.

Addendum, 22 Jan: Opened another one of these for my wife tonight; got an AMAZING banana nose right out of the bottle, so much so that I almost kept it to myself just to smell it!  She really likes this beer, much more so than some of the stuff I've brought home from the store.  Definitely a keeper.

Addendum, 30 Jan: Went to pour one for my wife tonight, while she was watching TV in the evening.  I came around the end of the couch, and she was out cold.  Oh, well...one for me.  Definite scent of banana, and a bit of booziness from the alcohol content.

Addendum, 24 Feb: A chilly, rainy day, and an evening of coding and writing ahead.  Delicious beer, very tasty, like a smoother, less spicy Leffe blonde.  Still excellent body and flavor.  I'm going to hold on to one of these to try along side the LemonDrop variant when it's ready next week.