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I've made several Belgian Dark Strong Ale recipes over the 8 or so years I've been home brewing. That's because the style is by far one of my favorites.  I enjoy its malt-forward, complex, and dark fruit flavors and the warming note from the high alcohol content. However, I've been disappointed with most of my brews to date (despite some competition-winning versions) because the dark fruit flavor just doesn't "pop" to the front of my palate.  This, for me, is one of the most enjoyable flavor elements of both the Dark Strong Ale and the Dubbel. During a live chat with a far more knowledgeable and experienced brewer, he suggested that I try experimenting with increased amounts of Special B Malt (up to 15% of the grist) and Dark Candi Sugar.  Today, I've decided to brew a fairly traditional Dark Strong style recipe but to include an extremely generous proportion (around 10%) of Special B malt.  I'll also be using D-90 Candi Syrup and Wyeast 1762, whic...

One of the best batches of beer I've made in recent memory was a La Trappe Quad clone recipe.  I had a couple of ideas that I thought would improve it, so I'm re-brewing it today. I decided to swap the corn sugar for Demerara Sugar and add a couple of ounces of Special B Malt to darken the color and punch up the dark fruit flavor a little.  I'm extending using a step mash to generate some ferulic acid to help the Belgian yeast express itself, and to improve malt complexity.  A 90-minute boil is also being used to help improve malt complexity in the finished beer. Ingredients 5 pounds Belgian Pale Ale Malt 3 pounds Belgian Pilsen Malt 8 ounces English Medium Crystal Malt (60L) 4 ounces Acid Malt 3 ounces Belgian Biscuit Malt 2 ounces Belgian Aromatic Malt 2 ounces Belgian Special B Malt 1 pound Demerara Sugar (15 min.) 0.50 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (60 min.) 0.30 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (20 min.) 0.25 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (5 m...

Early sample of the finished beer A couple of years ago, I received a bottle of Oak Aged La Trappe Quadrupel as a gift from a very thoughtful relative. At $15 for a 12-ounce bottle, the beer was both hard to find and hard to justify buying. It turned out to be absolutely delicious, and I've never seen a bottle since. (The Andersons near Sawmill Road carried it at the time, but they are long out of business.) When I bottled my (non-oak-aged) La Trappe Quadrupel clone on Friday, I decided that I was pleased enough with it to try using the recipe to make a clone of the oak aged version, too. Tonight, I put the Brewie to work on it. My plan is to soak oak chips in Everclear for a few days, then add those late in the primary fermentation. When the desired oak flavor is achieved, I'll bottle the beer and give it some time to age before sharing. This recipe is a slight change from the previous version, intended to raise the alcohol content but otherwise maintain the flavor of...

The finished beer I just acquired a Brewie+ automated brewing system. After I've gotten a few brews under my belt with it, I plan to do a compare-and-contrast post between iMake's The Grainfather, PicoBrew's Zymatic, and the Brewie+. For now, I'm working out how to use it properly. I can tell you already that the Brewie+ has a number of advantages over the Zymatic: up to 5 gallon batch size, larger grain bills, direct connection to your water supply, ability to brew offline, ability to sparge the grain, and automated wort chilling. It's also much quieter. On the other hand, recipe editing must be done on the device's touchscreen (until they provide you with access to their Android or iOS app, which isn't freely available online), and you need to do mash and sparge water calculations yourself. I'd been thinking about brewing a purported clone recipe for La Trappe Quadrupel. This is a really delicious Belgian Trappist beer, and one that I enjoy d...

Earlier this year, I won the 23rd Annual Homebrewing Competition at Barley's Ale House across from the Columbus Convention Center. The beer I won it with was a Belgian Dark Strong Ale, a favorite style of mine. There are only a few bottles left of the winning batch, and I have several friends and family who would love to try the beer. That means it's time to re-brew. I brewed the winning batch in November on The Grainfather. While I could fire up the device and brew a new batch following the old recipe, I'd rather work out how to brew it on the PicoBrew Zymatic, as that would be a much easier and more repeatable way to make it in the future. I used the Zymatic Recipe Crafter to scale the original recipe to the 2.5 gallon size and match the original beer's gravity. Then, because I've come to believe the Zymatic's recipe crafter drastically underestimates the bitterness of a beer relative to what I see in BeerSmith (where the original recipe was created), I us...

One of my personal favorites of all the beers I've brewed is the first version of the Boardwalk Belgian Quadrupel I made some time ago. I made a second version for competition earlier this year and was extremely disappointed with it. Despite that, it took third place at Barley's Ale House's annual homebrew competition and received very favorable comments from the judges. For this version, I reversed a choice I made in version 2.0 (using some high-alpha hops to improve head retention) and dramatically increased the amount of fruit used in the beer. The original version used 4 ounces of chopped raisins. This version uses 6 ounces of raisins and 8 ounces of prunes, pureed with some wort and added to the hop spider.  I also swapped out some of the Belgian Pilsen Malt for Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt and Melanoidin malt to improve head retention. Ingredients 10 pounds Belgian Pilsen Malt 1 pound Cara-Pils/Dextrine Malt 1 pound Melanoidin Malt 1 pound Caramel Munich Malt (Be...

A little over a year ago, I brewed a variant of the " Dixie Cup Boardwalk Belgian Quadrupel " that appeared in a 2007 issue of BYO magazine. It turned out to be one of the tastiest beers I'd ever brewed , and I think I have no more than a bottle left... and that's only because I jealously protected it to ensure it would still be around when I brewed it again. In my post-mortem notes for that batch, I said I wanted to do the following in version 2.0: Use temperature control to minimize the "burn" from the high alcohol, keeping the beer at or below 72F during the early stages of fermentation (and ramping up the temp later to encourage the formation of esters). Correct my sparge water calculations so that I hit the target volume and gravity. Use two full pounds of D-90 syrup (I had a partially used container last time that I had thought was a full pound but wasn't). Note: After considering all the adjuncts in this recipe I decided against this. ...

While browsing Craft Beer and Brewing, I noticed they'd posted a clone recipe for Avery Brewing's "The Reverend" Belgian Quad. This is one of my wife's and my favorite beers, so naturally I jumped at the chance to capture the recipe here for later use. Note: This recipe differs from the way it's published on Craft Beer & Brewing because I've adjusted it for my own brewhouse environment with The Grainfather. Refer to the link above if you want the "official" recipe. The Ingredients 15 pounds, 11 ounces of 2-row Pale Malt 11 ounces of Aromatic Malt 6 ounces of Cara-20 Malt 6 ounces of Cara-45 Malt 6 ounces of Special B Malt 1 pound of Dark Candi Sugar 1.75 ounces of Sterling hops pellets @ 6% AA 0.35 ounces of Sterling hops pellets @ 6% AA 0.80 ounces of Sterling hops pellets @ 6% AA 1/2 tsp. Super Irish Moss 1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient 1 vial White Labs Clarity Ferm Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity Yeast or White Labs WLP530...

A few months ago, I made an attempt to clone the excellent Trappistes Rochefort 10 beer in my Grainfather. The resulting beer turned out well, but had two significant flaws. It had no head when poured into a glass and it was missing a caramel/toffee note that was in the original beer. Since then, I believe I've sorted out the foam/head issues. The original recipe used a high percentage of adjuncts (D-180 candi syrup), relatively low-alpha-acid hops (4% and 6.4%), and probably had yeast that got a bit "tired" after fermenting an 8.5% or higher beer. In this version of the recipe, I've replaced some of the Pilsner malt with Cara-Pils and Melanoidin malts, which I've found produce an excellent creamy head without appearing to affect the flavor of the beer. I also replaced some of the Styrian Goldings hops pellets with German Northern Brewer pellets at 10.1% alpha acid. I'll also bottle the beer with a freshly-rehydrated yeast and priming sugar, which should ens...