I recently tried a monastic beer (a Belgian Strong Dark Ale) which was quite fantastic, so I'd like to try to take a shot at one of these for my next brew. I understand that these are better with a few months in the bottle, so I'd like to get one kicked off soon to have ready by the fall/winter timeframe. Does anyone have any tried and true recipes that they'd be willing to share? Here's the beer I'd like to try to mimic: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/44119/213624/ I'm sure few people have had this beer themselves, but from the description you might get a sense for what I'm going for. Thanks in advance.
No, never tried it. No, never brewed a Belgian dark strong,which this beer seeks to emulate. However, you can find recipes for the style across the web, you could try the dark strong recipe in Brewing Classic Styles ( also likely googleable), or perhaps even better, buy, beg, borrow, or steal youself a copy of Brew Like a Monk to gain more insight to this style. The descriptions of this beer make it sound quite tasty and homebrewing something like it sounds like a great endeavor.
After doing a bit of research, here's what I think I'm going to go with for a recipe. Critique away. Assuming 65% efficiency... 13 lbs Pilsen 3 lbs Wheat 2 lbs CaraMunich 1 lb Special B 3 lbs Belgian Candi Sugar Some amount of a noble hop at 60min to get 25 IBU, and ferment with a Belgian yeast. For a 5 gal batch, this should get me around 10% ABV.
That's kinda close to the quad i made. Goes down like water. http://byo.com/hops/item/1775-dixie-cup-boardwalk-belgian-quadrupel
3# of crystal malts in a 5 gallon batch of Belgian beer is quite much, IMO. In the past 10 years, there has been a shift towards using dark candi syrup to replicate Belgian styles rather than using the rock sugars and complex malt bills (especially crystal malts). I've never had the beer you are taking your inspiration from, so I can't say if your approach is right for that beer. I'm definitely not saying it will make a terrible beer. I do think it would be sweeter than I would want to drink, but this style beer (i.e., high gravity) isn't about downing one glass after the other, so maybe I would be tolerant of the sweetness on a one-glass basis.
Agreed on both points. Aside from using roughly the same amount of pilsner malt, in what way is it close? You've got half the sugar (and 30% of what you did use was lighter turbinado), less than half the caramunich, & 1/4 the amount of special B. Not suggesting one recipe is better than the other, but they'll make two very different beers! @CarolusP - maybe I'm missing something. My math has your OG at 1.117 and the beer is REALLY dark (~ 61 SRM). The latter may just be a glitch in the way promash deals with dark candi sugar (default value is 275L, what you buy may be considerably lower, or not). But the bigger issue is the former, IMO. For a strong dark ale, and particularly for one that finishes at ~ 10% abv? That's a really high OG! For it to stop at 10% would mean roughly 61% apparent attenuation. That's a FG in the neighborhood of 1.042 (residual extract of 1.056). Assuming you use a typical trappist strain, in good health, with sufficient starter and O2 - it's not going to stop at 60% (and I don't think you'd want it to, because it would be atypically full-bodied and sweet if it did). At that starting gravity, with full attenuation, you're looking at something between 12 - 13% abv. If you're ok with that? Godspeed. If you want to stick to 10%? I'd suggest keeping the pils and wheat the same (or drop the wheat altogether and replace with pils) and cutting the caramunich, special B and sugar all in half. At 65% efficiency, this drops your OG to 1.097 and will have you at 10% with 76% AA (right in the middle of the claimed range for WLP500) and a more appropriate FG of ~ 1.022. It also brings the color down to ~ 39. Still a tiny bit on the high side for the style, but not so far out in left field as it currently is. -df
I was referring to the types of grains, not the amount because like you said he has a higher abv in his recipe.
Thanks for the input. When reading about developing recipes, it seems like the amount of caramel malts is usually recommended as a percentage of the total malt bill rather than in proportion to the volume. I was shooting for around 15% of the malt bill being crystal malts, hence the 3#. If that sounds like a bit much to you, then I'll rely on y'all's expertise and bump it down a bit.
I'll have to double-check the numbers again and adjust as necessary. I ran the fermentables through Brewers Friend last night and those were the numbers it returned.
Here's the final recipe that I'm going with tonight after work. I've simplified it a bit (no wheat or Special B). I'm also subbing some Pilsen DME into the recipe since my BIAB setup gets a little unruly with grain bills higher than 15 lbs. 12 lbs Pilsen 2 lbs CaraMunich 3 lbs Pilsen DME (adding at 15 minutes left in boil) 3 lbs D-45 Belgian Candi Syrup (adding at 15 minutes left in boil) 2 oz Hallertau at 60 minutes Wyeast Belgian Abbey II OG = 1.101 (I'm assuming 65% efficiency. I'll reduce the DME if this is better.) ABV = 10%
Well the stars came out in this thread. Pretty good advice. You probably already mashed in and stuff, but to get that touch of cocoa you could have put a touch of Brown malt in there. Not to style but so what. Also, do not be afraid to "underpitch" Belgium (I know I know cant help myself right now) style yeast. I have mainly used 3787 and pitched as low as 450Kcells/ml/plato and gotten 90% attenuation and nice flavors. I have also thrown dubble wort on a full cake of 3787 and gotten the most bland beer ever. My point is Belgian yeast are a bit different than the good old ale yeast we usually use. My two cents. Have fun!
Thanks for your input. I didn't see your post in time to make any changes to my brew day, but I think your under-pitching advice may have been apt. I had a starter that I stepped up twice, and the fermentation definitely ripped pretty quickly. I haven't taken any gravity reading yet, but the airlock activity went from rigorous to quiet within about 48 hours. I did a taste test after about 5 days, and the beer tasted pretty dry with not much Belgian character or residual sweetness. It's definitely early, so maybe things will improve. I plan to let it sit in the fermenter for 3-4 weeks.
An update and a question. When I brewed this batch, my volume ended up a little less than I had planned. On top of that, my yeast attenuated better than I expected. So at bottling time, my ABV calculated out to 11.5%. Bottling was about 7 weeks ago, and I primed with 6 oz of brown sugar. I popped a bottle last week to see how things were progressing, and the carbonation was very low. I had a tiny little dry frog fart of a hiss when I opened the cap, and the beer was very flat. Should I have better carbonation at this point, or am I just being too impatient? I'm contemplating whether I should re-cap the bottles, adding a few drops of a champagne yeast or something. I know the yeast that I used had an alcohol tolerance of 12%, so I'm wondering if the yeast has just crapped out.
Mash at 148, boil for 90min 70% eff OG 1.090 FG 1.012-1.014 53% Belgian Pils 32% Belgian Pale 11% D-180 candi syrup (add at 10 min) 5% Special B 1oz Northern Brewer @60 1oz Hallertau @30 1oz Styrian Goldings @15 Cool wort to 65 and pitch a big starter 3787 Let it free rise to 75-78. (You will need a blow off) Once gravity is stable rack and store at 55 for 6-8 weeks Best damn BDSA I have ever made.
Sorry I didn't read the entire thread. Higher abv beers take forever to carb, but you could use the same yeast you fermented with to carb
Revisiting this again... I opened another bottle a few weeks ago (6 months after bottling), and while I think the carbonation has come along a little bit since a few months earlier, it's still not even close to what I want it to be. So, I'd like to try something.... I have some Brett B on hand for a different brew, and I had an idea to take about 12 bottles, uncap them, put a few drops of Brett B starter into the bottle, then re-cap. Am I asking for trouble? These are just standard 12 oz bottles, ABV is 11.5%, and my FG was around 1.012 I think (don't have my notes handy). My hope is that with the ABV that high, that even the Brett should move pretty slowly...at least slowly enough that if I open a test bottle and find the carbonation where I want it, I could throw the rest in the refrigerator to slow things down. Ambient temp in my basement is around 60-62 degrees.
