Ingredients

4 lbs. Pilsen DME, 3.15 lbs. Pilsen liquid malt extract, 2 lbs. Clear candi sugar, 8 oz. Caravienne, 4 oz. Aromatic malt, 2 oz. Styrian Goldings, 1 oz. sweet orange peel, and Safbrew Abbaye Dry Brewing Yeast

Recipe

This was an extract kit from Midwest Homebrewing Supply. The recipe is available online here.

Brew Notes

My kit was missing the dried orange peel so I ended up using 1 oz. fresh orange peel in place. Steeped grains for about 20 minutes. Transferred to secondary fermentation after about 2-3 weeks. Bottled about two and a half months later.

Tasting Notes

Tasted about 3 weeks after bottling. Had a nice taste overall. Orange peel is obviously there, but not over-powering at all. Reminds me of a Stella Artois on the first part of the sip but ends with a heavier beer hinted with oranges.

Tasted again 3 months after bottling and the beer got much better. The orange scaled back a lot, but still has a light citrus fresh aftertaste now. The first sips are sweet to nose (notes of vanilla even) and the first taste is almost creamy but quickly blends back to a Belgian. Overall the heavier tastes from earlier have lightened up and it has become very drinkable.

At around 6 months this beer got very good! Probably one of my favorites so far.

Update: Found 3 bottles of these in August 2016 (almost 2 years later) and enjoying it a lot. Still has prominent orange peel notes, a very crisp and refreshing mouth feel. Has an almost sweet finish.