Heavy Ale: am I Confusing Esters with Hops?

General Homebrew Discussion
1

I’m trying to figure heavy beers out. The wheaty ale I just made is making my eyes roll back in my head, but I’m not totally sure which flavor comes from what, and a good brewer ought to have some clue what each ingredient does, because you can’t write recipes if you have no idea what the ingredients do.

I made this beer with Sabro hops and no others. Boiled, steeped, and dry-hopped. People said Sabro would give me oranges and maybe pineapples and coconuts. I would say I taste more pineapples and coconuts than oranges. The Abbaye yeast also gave me some bananas. This is all fine, because I see this as a dessert beer. Like Tokay or Sauterne, only made from grain. You may drink IPA with your steak, but you drink a beer like this at the end of the meal, slowly, until the waiters pick up up and throw you into the parking lot.

The thing is, heavy ales have all sorts of weird flavors regardless of the hops used. I wonder if a more experienced brewer can give me an opinion as to whether all these flavors are from the hops or not. I know the yeast provides the bananas, but I’m not sure about the other stuff. What if I made this beer with something like Magnum and didn’t try to find exotic hops? Would it still be fruity?

It has been 19 years since the last (first) time I made this beer, and memories are unreliable, but it doesn’t seem that different now, and if that’s true, a lot of the character is coming from the grain.

I wonder if I should make an even stronger version of this. It starts at 1.084. Maybe I can go up a little and shoot for a wine-like ABV and even more sweetness. Brewer’s Friend thinks I’m just under 9%. Maybe a touch more heat, sweetness, and body would be pleasant.

5 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)
4 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)
2 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
1 lbs table sugar

Abbaye yeast. Sabro, 0.65 ounces boiled 60 minutes. Sabro, 0.5 ounces steeped for 15 minutes. Sabro, 1 ounce dumped in primary after one day of fermentation. Ferment at 68. I kegged at 1.017. I tried a little pressure to reduce the bananas. Served at 35@3.32 volumes (18 psi).

I screwed up the OG and had to add DME to get the last 10 points, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

2

It’s really difficult to guess what you are tasting, without being able to taste it out here over the interwebs.  You might be best served by taking samples to a local club meeting or submitting the beer to competition to see what others can detect.

3

Sabro should taste like cedar, coconut, and lime. Kind of a weird hop for my tastes.

4

It’s hard to give a good answer from afar but what you describes sounds a lot like the hops plus the yeast with those specific fruit flavors. Sabro is one of the few things I’ve ever tasted in a beer that gave a clear coconut flavor, aside from actual coconut and lightly toasted oak, so I would be surprised if you found coconut without those three ingredients in a prior batch. That’s not to say you don’t taste other ingredients differently than me. You can develop a lot of different flavors in higher gravity beers simply due to the concentration of ingredients–that is likely the source of some of the “weird flavors” you enjoy in the beer.

This could be interesting at a higher gravity but look at whether the yeast strain supports the gravity. You may need to consider using a different Belgian strain or blending two together. I would definitely plan on a longer fermentation timeline as you might see some stalling. It may have alcohol burn after hitting FG and need some time lagering to smooth out.

There is a fine line with those beers where they can jump from that dessert wine character you like right into syrupy. I would scale the entire recipe up, bump up the IBUs a little and use a greater percentage of table sugar to help get to the desired ABV to avoid syrupy. I would plan on needing a few attempts to dial the recipe in but personally I would rather drink test runs that are less sweet than those that are too sweet.

Give it a go and enjoy the experimentation along the way.

5

IMO, esters are British ales.