Begin Brewing!

The finished beer after 2 weeks in the bottle I've been able to brew Trappist Single, Tripel, and Quad (Dark Strong) ales that I'm happy with. One of my Tripels placed at the Ohio State Fair. Two of my Dark Strong Ales finished in the top three at Barley's Ale House. The one Trappist style I've brewed repeatedly but never been happy with is the Dubbel. It's not that I don't know what I want from a Dubbel. I want a nice deep ruby red color with a decent head and clarity. I want a noticeable aroma of dark fruit (prune/plum) and noble hops (preferably Saaz). I want a touch of sweetness, but not to a cloying degree, to bring out that dark fruit. A mild phenolic quality, manifesting as peppery or clove-like notes would be ideal. The body should lean toward medium. The beer should finish dry and clean. I found a recipe on Beer and Brewing that is attributed to Andy Mitchell, a brewer at New Belgium in Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm swapping out the East Kent...

The finished beer - look at the carbonation! A few months ago, I placed an online order for two batches of grain. One was for an English Dark Mild Ale, the other for a Bohemian Pilsner. As it turned out, I screwed up the order and ended up with a bag of mixed German and Belgian grains. After pondering what to do about this, I decided to try turning the mix into a Trappist Dubbel. The color and malt combination wasn't too far off. I added Munich malt to sweeten it a bit, Special B to add raisin/prune/plum flavors, plus Melany (Melanoidin) and Cara-Pils for head retention. Since I had some dark candi sugar rocks I wanted to use up, I included those. I also included some chopped golden raisins and prunes to (I hoped) help punch up the dark fruit flavor - something that's been sorely lacking in my previous Dubbels. I'm not sure this will be a true Dubbel in terms of its specifications, but I'm hopeful it will still turn out to be a tasty brew. Ingredients 4.75 ...

The finished beer I've brewed plenty of Belgian-style Dubbels over the years, from a variety of recipe sources. None of them has ever really blown me away. If you've ever had a cellared bottle of Bornem's "Double" then you know what my ideal Belgian Dubbel is like. If I could brew something close to that, I'd be happy and have my "house" Dubbel recipe. My goal is a deep ruby color with a lingering whipped-creamy head. The aroma should suggest noble hops, a touch of caramel, and dark fruit. The flavor should be slightly sweet, a pilsner malt backbone with hints of chocolate and plenty of prune, raisin, and plum flavors. It should finish clean with no lingering cloying sweetness and no lingering hop bitterness. With these goals in mind, I've started from the ground up for this recipe. I'm using a base of Pilsner malt and Munich to provide some sweetness. To that, I'm adding Special B malt and Dark Candi Sugar rocks to provide the da...

As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to perfect (to my taste, at least) recipes for the Trappist Single, Belgian Dubbel, Belgian Tripel, and Belgian Quadrupel.  The recipe I've had the most trouble with is the Belgian Dubbel.  I've made several, and they've all disappointed me, whether they were my own recipe, a published clone recipe for a commercially-available Dubbel I like, or any other.  In many cases, they come out too light in color, with little or no dark fruit flavor. In others, they come out dry or overly bitter.  My most-recent attempt before today had a practically perfect color but still missed the prune/plum flavor I've been looking for.  Today's recipe began as a BYO Magazine recipe for the Belgian Dubbel style, modified a bit.  I replaced the hops with my preferred blend and changed the candi sugar rocks out for syrup. Ingredients 5 pounds Belgian Pilsen 1.5 pounds Belgian Pale Ale 4 ounces Belgian Caramunich 8 ounces D-90 Ca...

The finished beer, poured into a glass I have made a number of Belgian Dubbel recipes over the years. All of them have been nice enough beers to drink, but none have approached what (in my mind) is a truly good Belgian Dubbel.  I've even tried my hand at a recipe or two of my own design, with a similar lack of success.  Recently, I think I figured out why. I've been keeping my beer's color within the BJCP guidelines of 14-17 SRM.  The genuine Belgian Dubbels I've liked the most are rated with colors as dark as 41 SRM.  These Dubbels, instead of being brown with a tinge of copper, are more of a dark ruby red.  This time, I worked to get a color and grist that seemed right to me and ignored the BJCP color guideline (while staying within the others).  I'm anxious to see how this one turns out.  I'm looking for a slightly-sweet, deep ruby color, with a strong dark fruit flavor and some noble hops aroma. Recipe 3.25 pounds Belgian Pilsen Malt 2 ...

First bottle of the Dubbel After brewing the Pico Pale Ale in the Zymatic on Wednesday, I decided to try another recipe today.  There is a clone recipe for Chimay Red (a Belgian Dubbel) on the American Homebrewing Association web site that I've wanted to try.  The thing I've always disliked about Chimay lies in the hop flavor it has.  The clone recipe used East Kent Goldings, which rarely agrees with my palate. I decided to substitute Styrian Celeia for the EKG and finish with Czech Saaz.  I like that combination in Belgian ales.  At brew time, I discovered I did not have any Crystal 100L but did have Crystal 80L, so I decided to use that instead. Ingredients 5 pounds, 2 ounces Belgian Pale Ale Malt 9 ounces Aromatic Malt 5 ounces Crystal 80L 5 ounces Corn Sugar dissolved into mash water 0.70 ounces Styrian Celeia hops @ 2.8% AA (60 min.) 0.50 ounces Styrian Celeia hops @ 2.8% AA (30 min.) 0.25 ounces Czech Saaz hops @ 3% AA (10 min...

Back in October 2016, I brewed a Belgian Dubbel I named after my later mother .  It's one of my wife's favorite beers I've made, but sadly not one of my own.  I liked it, but I believed it could be much better.  Tonight, I tweaked the recipe a bit and brewed a one-gallon batch of it. I used the Sous Vide cooker to handle mash and sparge water, and an induction cooktop to perform the boil.  While I'm still working out volume and efficiency calculations on the setup, I'm getting a little closer each time I do it. Recipe 1 pound, 12 ounces German Pilsner Malt 3 ounces Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt 3 ounces Special B Malt 1 ounce Melanoidin Malt 4 ounces D-45 Candi Syrup 0.2 ounces Styrian Goldings hops pellets @ 6.4% AA 60 min 0.2 ounces Czech Saaz hops pellets @ 3.2% AA 5 min 1/8 tsp. Irish Moss Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity Ale Yeast For this version of the recipe, I dropped the Caramunich I malt. I switched from D-90 syrup to D-45 syrup, and...

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, it's no secret that I am fan of Belgian style ales. I've made at least six different Tripel recipes that I can remember, several Quadrupels, two or three Trappist Singles, and before this, two Dubbels. One was an extract beer that turned out OK. The other was an all-grain beer that was easy to drink but just didn't hit the mark for me. The recipe I brewed on February 5, 2017, started out as a clone of La Trappe Dubbel. La Trappe's Dubbel is one of my favorites. When I started assembling the ingredients for this one, I began wondering about my Saaz hops. They were a bit older, and were only 3.2% alpha acid to start with. My concerns were that they might not bitter the beer enough, and that adding a lot of them might trigger a grassy flavor in the finished beer. So I made the decision to use some German Northern Brewer hops to handle the bittering. They were fresh and certainly strong enough at 10.1% alpha acid. I wou...

I've only made one Belgian Dubbel in all the time I've been brewing. That was an extract-based Dubbel that turned out just "OK" by my taste. I decided to create a new all-grain one. The Recipe 8 pounds Belgian Pale Malt 3 pounds Belgian Pilsner Malt 8 ounces Special B Malt 4 ounces Caramunich I Malt 4 ounces Melanoidin Malt 4 ounces Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt 6 ounces D-90 Candi Syrup 12 ounces Golden Candi Syrup 1.25 ounces Styrian Goldings hops pellets @ 6.4% AA 1.25 ounces Czech Saaz hops pellets @ 3.2% AA 1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient 1/2 Whirlfloc Tablet 1 Tbsp. pH 5.2 Stabilizer 1 packet Omega Labs OYL-028 Belgian Ale W yeast 1 packet of dry T-58 Belgian Abbaye yeast Estimated OG: 16.9 Brix (Actual was 18.3) Estimated Pre-boil Gravity: 16.7 (Actual was 15.2 before sugars) Estimated FG: 9.7 Brix (adjusted for alcohol), actual was 10.5 Brix IBU: 22.9 SRM: 17.2 ABV: 6.8% Batch Size: 5.6 gallons (5 gallons into fermenter) Some of you may be wo...

I have a Belgian Dubbel in the fermenter that will need to be bottled soon.  I wondered if Belgian Candi Syrup could be used as the priming sugar.  As it turns out, you can do that.   A document on the Simplicity Candi Syrup web site explains now. You need to know two things about your beer in order to do this properly.  First, what volume of CO2 do you want in the beer?  You can determine this from the style.  My Dubbel will want something in the range of 2.3 to 2.9 Volumes.  Next, what is the volume of beer you're carbonating?  In my case, this is a 2.5 gallon batch. On the Simplicity Candi Syrup web site, they offer an instruction document for carbonating beer with Candi Syrup.  The information below is derived from that document. CO2 (Volumes) Grams of Candi Syrup per Gallon 2 22.47 2.1 24.66 2.2 26.84 2.3 29.03 2.4 31.21 2.5 33.4 2.6 35.58 2.7 3...