Rusty Vs. Hardywood
For years I have been trying to clone Hardywood’s “Belgian Singel”.
When I first started getting into craft beer, being from Virginia it wasn’t long until I ran across this beer. Founded in 2011, Hardywood is one of the older and more well established breweries in the Richmond area and throughout the state. I found most of Hardywood’s early lineup to be unique, classic, simple, and interesting. They’ve been around before the hazy IPA / fruited sour / pastry stout craze - although they’ve been making a popular Gingerbread imperial milk stout seemingly since day one.
“Belgian Singel”, Hardywood’s flagship beer, is of course a Belgian Single, which is also known as Belgian Blonde ale - a “lighter” version of the more popular Belgian Tripel. I say “lighter” because it is indeed lower in gravity and ABV, while still clocking in somewhere between 6 - 7.5% (Hardywood’s example is 6.2%). This beer was likely my first encounter with any Belgian style brews, especially being readily available, local, more affordable and less intimidating than say, Chimay or Westmalle.
2015 : Attempt 1
Naturally, as a homebrewer, I’ve always wondered “Can I brew that?” In 2015 I gave my first crack at it - after a moderately thorough web search, I found no real insight on a clone recipe (although there were several hits on Gingerbread Stout clone attempts). I reached out the brewery with a couple messages asking for hints, but no response. Can’t blame them. I also asked the guys at the homebrew shop in DC; no help there (I can’t remember if they hadn’t heard of the beer or maybe were unfamiliar with the style as well? Looking back, I’m now surprised that that was a complete dead end). The only thing close in my repertoire up to that point was a “Tea & Toast” Belgian blonde ale brewed with tea that I’d brewed from a recipe in Brooklyn Brewshop’s Beer Making Book. I thought I would start with that. As far as altering the recipe towards Hardywood Singel, the only notes my young palette could come up with on the target beer was faint lemon and wood. My plan was to infuse some lemon peel in secondary.
By the time the beer finished fermenting, I’d come up with a different plan for the beer - I split the batch three ways for three different infusions, (none of which being my original lemon idea). I called it “Blinde” : I intended to serve the beer to family at the beach house, quizzing them to see if they could guess the infusions.
Blinde : A Belgian Blonde brewed with ??? (artwork by runnerteal)
2016 : Attempt 2
The following year I kicked the tires on this recipe again, making some minor adjustments. This time I had in mind nailing the clone brew and serving it at the company Christmas party. Excerpt from my brew journal :
11/21/2016 : Bottled this last Thursday 11/17 and it seems to taste pretty spot on. Same recipe as the Blinde but I think it might come out a little lighter in color. Yay! Will it be closer to Hardywood Singel? Which is the whole reason why I started this recipe last year in the first place? My plan is to let it carb up nicely then cold crash it for a couple days before the trip to Bethesda (still not sure how I’m going to get it up there - drive it or Amtrak it?)
Well, the beer did not turn out any lighter, and worse, it developed a metallic taste and was under carbonated. I had to punt on taking it to work, and it sat in boxes on the garage floor for a pretty long time - I ignored it out of frustration.
“TrustMonkey” was a joke mascot for our cyber security shop. He donned the company Christmas party brew that never saw the light of day.
Six or eight months later, I needed the bottles for something else, so I opened a couple to taste before dumping the beer. The metallic taste had subsided almost completely, and the beer was now properly carbonated. I decided to let the brew live on, and drank a bottle every now and then, pondering my next approach. It had really improved but it certainly wasn’t good enough to serve to anyone besides myself.
2017 : Attempt 3
I admittedly did not give this third attempt a good shot for success. Center of the Universe, a local brewery, was running a wort-share / homebrew contest - they invited local homebrewers into the brewery to help mash and produce a big batch of wort which they divided up into 5 gallon buckets that brewers could take home to brew with. Samples of the finished beers would be returned to the brewery a month or so later for the homebrew contest, winner getting to collab with the pro’s to scale up their recipe for commercial production. The only details divulged ahead of time was that the wort was going to be “about” 1.050. My plan for this : belgian blonde. Looking back, I should’ve guessed that the wort would’ve been heavily two-row base malt, and not the Belgian preferred pilsner malt, but I figured a really classy belgian blonde might stand out in the contest lineup, amongst the inevitable IPAs and stouts with crazy infusions. I had Belgian blonde on my todo list anyway, it was 20 bucks for wort and a plastic fermenter, so I just went for it.
Well, that particular weekend turned out to be a bit hectic. Our first child was still an infant at the time so I was still learning that a brew day could no longer simply happen at any time now that I was a dad. Dealing with the little one all morning, I missed the brew day at the brewery but was able to swing by later to pick up the wort bucket. When I got home I threw it into the fridge for two days until I was able to brew. Brew day and fermentation went pretty smoothly. When it was time to open the bottles, the batch again turned up with a metallic taste! The recipe had little to do with its predecessor but possibly my process and cleanliness was lacking (although I’ve only ever had this issue on these two Belgian blondes). Certainly storing unboiled wort for two days before brewing didn’t help. Months later, the metallic taste again subsided and I again begrudgingly drank the bottles in frustration.
2020 : Attempt 4
Three years passed. In January 2020, after listening to a podcast about Belgian and Trappist beers, I set out to brew one of each of the Belgian styles throughout the year, culminating in a grand tasting with family at Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. First on my list, that pesky Belgian blonde. I actually started with the failed 2017 recipe, swapped out the two-row for pilsner malt, and simplified a couple other items in the grain bill and hop schedule. This brew was the first of my blondes that would not be bottle conditioned - I carbonated it in the keg and filled cans with my shiny new Oktober canning machine.
Turns out I did not have my canning game quite dialed in so the cans all turned out under carbonated. The beer was really much too dark, and overly sweet as well.
2021 : Attempt 5
Ok, new year! During the 2020 pandemic I was able to spend a bit more time reading, learning, and brewing, fine tuning my process along the way. I decided it was time to finally give a good attempt on this brew. I did another round of research and scrapped all previous versions of the beer. Inspired by a brew by the Mad Fermentationalist, I came up with a very simple implementation - pilsner malt, cane sugar, hallertau mittelfruh, and Wyeast 1214.
On brew day, I realized we already had a problem. The yeast smack pack had been activated the day prior but was not swelling at all. Up to this point I’ve batted 1.000 on these smack packs so I decided to disregard this issue…crossed my fingers, pitched the yeast and went to bed. In the morning, I peaked into the fermenter, no activity. RDWHAHB is the saying to remember in times like these….but it was 7am on a Tuesday during dry January! I was able to keep away for another 24 hours but the following morning there was still no activity. Something had to be done! My only option was to pitch some old, possibly dead Wyeast 3787 yeast cake I had jarred in the fridge from a previous batch of Tripel. 24 hours later, we had activity. I racked it to keg for carbonation and bottled it from the keg. Here is the final taste test / comparison with Hardywood Singel :
This time I was really pretty close, with some recognizable and fixable differences. The beer turned out a bit clearer than Hardywood’s - this was the first batch I gelatin fined. It also had only a very brief head. I purposely chose this simple recipe to focus on the main elements of the beer - the head can be corrected with proper selection of specialty malts (e.g. dextrine malt). The aroma, mouthfeel and overall taste of the beer is very close to Hardywood though! It has high fruity esters from the Belgian yeast, slightly sweet, but also relatively thin; crisp, slightly bitter and spicy. All these years later, I still get notes of lemon peel and wood (maybe cedar?) in the Singel. I am reading recently that of the noble hops, Saaz may lend some citrus and possibly some earthy woody notes. Next time I will try to add some into the flavoring addition.
After 6 years of striking out on this beer, I think I may have finally hit a single.
Recipe and stats on the beer can be found here.
Update! In 2021 this beer brought home some hardware :
Gold medal at the 2021 Dominion Cup put on by James River Homebrewers in Richmond, VA
Silver medal at the 2021 SNAFU Winterfest in Las Vegas, NV.
Silver medal at the 2021 Virginia Beer Blitz put on The Colonial Ale Smiths & Keggers (CASK) in Hampton, VA.
