philm00x wrote:Is a Bier de Mars anything like a marzen? Both of which imply that they are brewed in March...
Yes Marzen was brewed in March as a "last hurrah" before it got too hot and the bugs came out and messed with beer making (unless you like funky/sours, which lagers are not). Then when it got cool in the fall they had to empty their vessels to make room for new beer, so anything left got drunk up - hence Oktoberfest was born.
Bier de Mars is French/FrancoBelgian (so it does/can have German influence) but is more of a farmhouse beer. So they are not generally alike. Although they actually can be similar, they can also be radically different, because farmhouse beers don't follow the rules. Traditionally it was basically a lower ABV Bier de Garde that was brewed in late winter/early spring for consumption soon afterword's in late spring/early summer (planting season). Where Bier de Garde was brewed stronger for "keeping" which is the literal meaning of Bier de Garde. IE you'd drink that in the fall to sustain you through harvest season.
Sometimes they were brewed "lager style" like German beers if the farmer had the ability, in which they very well could resemble a festbier as they tend to be malty, not hoppy beers. You could use any Noble hop, but are typically with French hops like Streisselspalt. Farmers would have used whatever they had. I'm going to use a mix of French Aramis - see
http://www.hopunion.com/french-aramis - and Streisselspalt - see
http://www.hopunion.com/french-strisselpalt
I tend to make my Bier de Garde and Bier de Mars more of this style, or often using Kolsch yeast or German Ale yeast, which is perfectly acceptable.
But they can also be wild fermented or more funky beers brewed with French Saison yeast and/or Brett or sour bugs. Which obviously is totally different. It would all depend on the farmer, if they brewed it in the funky cheese cellar or had a dedicated space for lagering, or in the barn with the critters, or what not.
All are totally valid style wise because both were ways they traditionally turned out. Although for Bier de Mars, with saison yeast you should ferment at the lowest temperatures possible for the yeast strains, because it was chilly still, so they won't taste like a saison brewed at higher temps. Being that they were fermented cool and consumed young, even a funky brett / buggy beer won't be all that funky/sour, as it takes a while for the full funkiness to develop, and again they are malty beers to start with and brewed at lower temps, which suppress the bugs to some extent... So it shouldn't taste like Orval, nor should it be like drinking a Geuze. Unless you let it sit too long. But your not supposed to do that. It's meant to be consumed right away.
Being farmhouse beers, with farmers malting their own grains, they could have a character from light to amber to dark in color depending on how careful the farmer happened to be. So all of those are valid too. I like mine amber - mostly pils, but with a just touch of roasted malts, and some crystal or caravienna, and some Munich or Vienna and/or Aromatic. malts. A caramel like candi syrup is also good, something like 45L or a similar candi sugar. I'll likely put about 8oz of 45L into my 5 gallon batch.
Some more modern Bier de Mars are brewed a higher strengths that overlap Bier de Garde, and some are really funky because they are strong aged brett beers, but I don't consider those to be a good representation of what they traditionally were, those are more like a true funky Bier de Garde. (Bier de Garde can also be lager like or funky).
I'll likely use washed Kolsch yeast from the batch of Kolsch I've got going, or maybe split the 5 gallons and make one batch with that and one batch with bella saison if my temps are such that I can rely on it staying 63-64 at least.
In any case all those beers/styles are malty, not hoppy, so that's why March = IPA month gets in my craw LOL.
Just slightly ahead of the hunt and peck folks. Learning on a manual has another draw back. I have a bad habit of resting my fingers on the keyboard, so lots of random letters show up. 