Single Fin Belgian Blonde Ale

ALL-GRAIN

“The recipe for Single Fin, a Belgian-style blonde ale, is very simple,” says Michael Kane of Kane Brewing Co. “We focus on getting great ingredients and the fermentation profile to create a majority of the flavor.”

OG: FG: IBUS: ABV:

1.042 1.008 23 4.5%

MALT/GRAIN BILL

7.5 lb (3.4 kg) Continental 5 oz (142 g) Vienna malt 5 oz (142 g) Wheat

HOPS SCHEDULE

1 oz (28 g) minutes 0.25 oz (7 knockout 0.25 oz (7

pilsner malt

Styrian Goldings at 90

Styrian Goldings at

g) Saaz at knockout

DIRECTIONS

Mash for 90 minutes at 148–149°F (64–65°C). Boil for 90 minutes following the hops schedule. Chill to 64°F (18°C), then pitch the yeast. Hold the temperature at 64°F (18°C) for 12 hours, then raise it to 70°F (21°C) over the course of fermentation (about 1 week for primary).

YEAST

g)

East Coast Belgian Abbaye 2 (ECY13) or other Trappist yeast

BREWER’S NOTES

Kane recommends that you start with 0.25 ounce (7 grams) each of Styrian Goldings and Saaz at knockout and then adjust to flavor.

Recipes are built to yield a batch size of 5 gallons and assume 72% brewhouse efficiency unless otherwise noted. single seemed to be the obvious choice. We thought it would be a good platform for pulling flavor out of yeast and malt, at only 4 percent ABV.”

Single Fin, like a lot of the other Belgian-style beers at the brewery, is brewed with “Trappist-style” yeast, says Kane. “Our first, and the yeast we liked the best, is Belgian Abbaye 2 (ECY13) from East Coast Yeast. That’s what we’ve used the most. [But] we love to experiment, so we’ve also tried White Labs Trappist (WLP500), and we’re about to try some batches using their Belgian Abbey Yeast (WLP530). For most of the year we have a saison strain as well. Most recently we’ve been using a blend of four different strains from East Coast Yeast, but we’ve used the single Dupont strain from White Labs in the past for both our saisons and wits,” he says.

At Kane Brewing, the Belgian-style beers are dry and highly carbonated. “Our Belgian-style quad, for example, is between 11 and 12 percent ABV, dark, and very dry. It’s traditional, with higher carbonation and dark fruit notes,” Kane says. “We want to honor the Belgian tradition, but are by no means experts in Belgian-style beers. We’re an American craft brewery with a twist.”

Often responsible for that twist are the 150 non-sour barrels in the brewery’s expanding barrel program, including bourbon, tequila, French and American oak, brandy, and cognac barrels. This program yields such beers as the annual release A Night To End All Dawns, a 12 percent ABV imperial stout that ages in bourbon barrels for fifteen months. In 2014, Kane created three additional versions of A Night To End All Dawns—one aged on Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans, one aged on dark roast coffee from nearby Rook Coffee Roasters, and one aged on roasted cacao beans.

Many of the retired wine barrels that Kane uses come from two local New Jersey wineries: Working Dog Winery in East Windsor and Valenzano Winery in Shamong. For Kane Brewing, the emphasis is on New Jersey whenever possible. “We use a lot of different products that come from New Jersey in our beers,” says Kane. “Coffee, ingredients from local farmers, and even a local microbiologist with a small yeast company—we’ve used his Trappist yeast strain.”

New Jersey is smack in between New York and Philadelphia, so the area is gateway to many other craft-beer cities, Kane says. “Some brewers have even moved past New Jersey because markets are easier to penetrate elsewhere. We [self-distribute] and have mostly draft sales. We’re totally focused on New Jersey.”