Begin Brewing!

The actual beer described in this post I'm a big fan of Belgian Trappist beers, and Trappistes Rochefort 10 is one of my favorites. Some time ago I came across a recipe that claimed to be "very much a Trappistes Rochefort 10 clone" and brewed it.  The creator of the recipe was correct, it was quite close to the original. The clone seemed to be missing the head and a caramel note in the original beer, so I tweaked the recipe to include Melanoidin malt and Carapils malt, which in combination seem to me to produce a very creamy, long-lasting Belgian-like head.  Unfortunately in the second version I also added a high-alpha hop to help with head generation and that ruined the beer for me. In this version, I'm going back to the original roots. I'm using just Styrian Goldings to bitter it and Hallertau Mittelfrueh for flavor and aroma.  I'm adding Belgian Cara 45 malt to try to capture the caramel note that was missing from the first version.  I'm also us...

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...

Recently, I started inventorying my brewing ingredients.  In the process, I realized that I had ordered everything needed to make a Trappistes Rochefort 10 clone recipe I'd seen a while ago.  I just didn't have the yeast.  Then I remembered that I'd bought a few cans of Fast Pitch a while ago and hadn't used them.  I also had a bottle of Rochefort 10 in the fridge.  Time to grow my own yeast! I sanitized my one-liter flask and magnetic stirring bar.  I sprayed Star San on the bottle of beer, the opener, and the lid of the Fast Pitch can and let them soak a little.  Then I poured Fast Pitch into the flask and enough distilled water to hit the 1L mark.  I opened the bottle of Rochefort 10, poured most of it into a glass for my own enjoyment, and left about a quarter-inch in the bottle.  This leftover part I swirled vigorously until I could see no more yeast sediment in the bottom of the bottle.  I tipped this "slurry" into the flask of...