So I brewed a beer over the weekend and felt that I needed to share the recipe.
First, here’s the back story.
A couple months ago, I had bought a Belgian sampler six-pack at a local beer shop. It was a great purchase, some good beers and some not-so great. There was one in the pack called Gulden Draak, it was a really big complex beer and I loved it. So naturally, I decided to see if anyone had made a clone and put a recipe online. I found quite a few, and decided that if I was going to make something similar that I’d patch together pieces from all the other recipes. I don’t really want to call it a clone, because I don’t have enough brewing experience yet, or a palate refined enough, to identify all the subtleties in the original. So I decided to call it Golden Dragon, my guess as to what the translated name would be, and as I found during my recipe research, a name Northern Brewer had used for a similar beer intended as a clone.
OK, enough of me going on, here’s the recipe I used (In my own shorthand, not a conventional recipe layout):
3 gallon batch (I can only get 2.5 gallons to boil on my stovetop, and with such a big beer I didn’t want an overly concentrated boil – I don’t know if that makes any difference, but I wanted to be safe)
Partial mash:
1 lb Belgian CaraMunich Malt
1 lb Belgian Aromatic Malt
½ lb Belgian Biscuit Malt
½ lb Special B Malt
¼ lb Acidulated Malt
First wort hop (kettle filled up to 2.5 gallons):
½ oz Sterling Hops
60 minute addition:
4 lbs Pilsen DME
30 minute addition:
½ oz Styrian Goldings Hops
15 minute addition:
½ oz Sterling Hops
1 tsp Irish Moss
5 minute addition:
½ oz Styrian Goldings Hops
Cool, top fermenter up to 3 gallons, then add:
1 packet T-58 Dry Yeast
1 packet S-33 Dry Yeast
Note: I made something similar to a starter (water, 1/2 lb DME, both yeast packets) about 6 hours before addition. This was more to get the yeast working in a lower gravity solution before
About the time the krausen falls (after 2.5 days in this case), add the following to the fermenter:
1 lb Amber Candi Syrup
½ lb Brown Candi Sugar
½ lb Corn Sugar
The OG (adjusted for late sugar addition by using Hopville's Beer Calculus) came out to be 1.106, just slightly under the predicted 1.110. I'm guessing that I would have been dead on, but I topped up to 3 gallons and forgetting the late syrup/sugar addition, diluting the beer just a bit more than I planned. Oh well, more beer!
I took a hydrometer sample today. After 5 days (3 days after sugar additions), the gravity had dropped all the way down to 1.021, already below the calculated FG of 1.030. All I could think was that those were some hungry yeast! I tried a bit of the hydrometer sample, and it's already delicious. It has a fruity aroma, but the flavor is very complex with a warm alcohol bite, and reminds me of the original. Obviously I can't quite judge how close I came at this point, but I'm very pleased at this point.
First, here’s the back story.
A couple months ago, I had bought a Belgian sampler six-pack at a local beer shop. It was a great purchase, some good beers and some not-so great. There was one in the pack called Gulden Draak, it was a really big complex beer and I loved it. So naturally, I decided to see if anyone had made a clone and put a recipe online. I found quite a few, and decided that if I was going to make something similar that I’d patch together pieces from all the other recipes. I don’t really want to call it a clone, because I don’t have enough brewing experience yet, or a palate refined enough, to identify all the subtleties in the original. So I decided to call it Golden Dragon, my guess as to what the translated name would be, and as I found during my recipe research, a name Northern Brewer had used for a similar beer intended as a clone.
OK, enough of me going on, here’s the recipe I used (In my own shorthand, not a conventional recipe layout):
3 gallon batch (I can only get 2.5 gallons to boil on my stovetop, and with such a big beer I didn’t want an overly concentrated boil – I don’t know if that makes any difference, but I wanted to be safe)
Partial mash:
1 lb Belgian CaraMunich Malt
1 lb Belgian Aromatic Malt
½ lb Belgian Biscuit Malt
½ lb Special B Malt
¼ lb Acidulated Malt
First wort hop (kettle filled up to 2.5 gallons):
½ oz Sterling Hops
60 minute addition:
4 lbs Pilsen DME
30 minute addition:
½ oz Styrian Goldings Hops
15 minute addition:
½ oz Sterling Hops
1 tsp Irish Moss
5 minute addition:
½ oz Styrian Goldings Hops
Cool, top fermenter up to 3 gallons, then add:
1 packet T-58 Dry Yeast
1 packet S-33 Dry Yeast
Note: I made something similar to a starter (water, 1/2 lb DME, both yeast packets) about 6 hours before addition. This was more to get the yeast working in a lower gravity solution before
About the time the krausen falls (after 2.5 days in this case), add the following to the fermenter:
1 lb Amber Candi Syrup
½ lb Brown Candi Sugar
½ lb Corn Sugar
The OG (adjusted for late sugar addition by using Hopville's Beer Calculus) came out to be 1.106, just slightly under the predicted 1.110. I'm guessing that I would have been dead on, but I topped up to 3 gallons and forgetting the late syrup/sugar addition, diluting the beer just a bit more than I planned. Oh well, more beer!
I took a hydrometer sample today. After 5 days (3 days after sugar additions), the gravity had dropped all the way down to 1.021, already below the calculated FG of 1.030. All I could think was that those were some hungry yeast! I tried a bit of the hydrometer sample, and it's already delicious. It has a fruity aroma, but the flavor is very complex with a warm alcohol bite, and reminds me of the original. Obviously I can't quite judge how close I came at this point, but I'm very pleased at this point.
