2012 Great Big Belgian Split

I have on hand the following yeasts:
Wyeast 1214 Abbey
White Labs 575 Belgian Ale Blend
White Labs 500 Trappist

I am interested in doing a 10 gallon batch and splitting fermentations into (1) 5-gallon batch and (2) 2.5 gallon batches.

Last year I made a killer Belgian blonde and am curious if that style would possess an appropriate grain bill to experiment with these 3 particular strains.

Looking at the nature of Belgians it almost looks like I can do whatever I want.

Any advice would be pretty cool.

The recipe goes (rounded values)
80% Pilsner
10% Table sugar
10% Cara-Pils

17 IBUs Perle
8 IBUs Styrian
2 IBUs Saaz

Mash @ 150

I'm in the midst of converting the BJCP guidelines to chart form and just did Belgian Strong ales, so that is burned into my eyeballs. Are you trying to make 3 versions of a blond? Or a blond and, say, two BGS? IIRC, the gravities overlap (or close enough for a # of DME to fix) and the other differences are mostly yeast-derived. Should be a cool experiment!

I'm not really looking to make anything particular.

Sounds like a perfect experiment to really learn those yeasts' characters.

looks like a good experiment.

1214 and the 500 are basically the same yeast, so the taste should be the same for those two.

Since 500 & 1214 are so close, I'll bottle one of them with orval dregs.

petep1980 said:

Since 500 & 1214 are so close, I'll bottle one of them with orval dregs.

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Great idea.

Sounds like an interesting experiment! I'm currently doing something similar - a 5 gallon batch of dark strong ale, split between 500 and 550. Should be interesting. Especially trying to ramp fermentation temp with only a fish tank heater and an electric blanket. Nothing like going to sleep to the sound of multiple airlocks bubbling though

What I can also do is split the 5 gallon batch at bottling as well between 1 case without a bottling yeast, and another with a bottling yeast.

This is pretty cool, I should end up with 4 cases of different beer.

Hey guys, I just wanted to update everyone. I ended up using different yeast. But this is what I ended up doing:

Brewed 10 gallons of Belgian frankenbrew:

I fermented 7.5 gallons with Wyeast 3787.
I bottled 2.5 gallons with no bottling yeast
I bottled 2.5 gallons with the dregs of Helios as bottling yeast.
I plan to bottle the remaining 2.5 gallons with dregs of Orval yeast.

I fermented 2.5 gallons with French Saison
I will bottle with no bottling yeast at all.

Last night I did the Helios case and OMG when I stirred the dregs into the beer before bottling it already smelled wonderful.

Also, interestingly I had to split the 3787 between two fermenters, a 6-gallon and a 3-gallon. The 3-gallon fermentation ended up around 1.004 and the 6-gallon around 1.010. The Saison fermentation at 1.000.

I plan to age them all at least a couple months.

This ended up being such an exciting experiment, because from one brew day and 1 mash I may walk away with 4 different cases of Belgian beer.

The man is brilliant

WLP 575 is interesting. Not necessarily in a way I loved.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

WLP 575 is interesting. Not necessarily in a way I loved.

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I didn't end up using it.

I had the 3787 one yesterday with no bottling yeast and it was very impressive. The mouthfeel was ideal, and for being such a big beer it was extremely smooth. It came in around 8% ABV but you weren't over powered with alcohol flavor.

The downsides were it was not crystal clear, and the smell was a little off. It almost had that Kolsh smell but it was very subtle. The smell was hardly enough to make anyone not enjoy it. If this is the best of the 4 cases I'll be pleased.

I'm planning on testing another one in a week.

I finally had the portion of the batch bottled with the Helios yeast. It definitely has that special taste the Helios has but there is either not enough of it, or it's not balanced too well with the malt flavor.

The beer tastes fantastic, but in a real Helios I taste almost no malt, and this definitely has a malt flavor to it.