Devon White Ale

Or…Oakland White Ale

I attempted to make a Devon White Ale today.

Well, due to a error on my part, I ended up with German instead of UK Pilsner. And I modified the vague recipe to fit my brewing process. So maybe I didn’t — but I certainly brewed an Oakland White Ale.

The West Country White Ale is a historic beer style that’s best explained (as usual) by Martyn Cornell. The inspiration for this came in the Trappist as I was supping a St. Bernadus Christmas Ale, leafing through Radical Brews trying to decide what to brew next. I had already picked out the Juniper Rye Bock in the book and was thinking what else to do. I looked at the Devon White Ale recipe with the addition of egg and salt and thought it sounded fun — I had just about finished up with Amber, Black and Gold and I had a vague memory of it being described in there. It’s my standard 6L split batch (2x3L) so I get started.

4lbs of Pilsner Malt into the mash tun, 4L of water up to 85 to dough in and I let the mash take it’s course. In the meantime, I mix together 2 egg whites and 100g of Whole Wheat Flour.

Both Cornell and Mosher say that the mixture should form a “paste”. Mine formed a dough but that’s by the by. A stuck mash and emergency transfer to a brew in the bag bag later I had 10L of 1.035 wort in the kettle. 90 Minutes later I had 6L of 1.056 wort. I split the two between two 1G glass carboys — into one of the carboys I put the dough and into the other I pitched a packet of Wyeast Roselare blend.

From what Martyn says the ferment and serving was pretty fast, so I guess this is like using a sourdough yeast to ferment and then a quick serve so it doesn’t taste rotten. Hopefully there’ll be enough lacto in the wheat flour to get going on the wort and even if the roselare blend turns nasty it should be interesting.

Fingers crossed that something at least will happen….