Concerned by my choice of yeast for Bornem Tripel clone

Getting ready to brew this weekend my first tripel. I am going to do a partial mash Bornem Tripel clone from Clone Brews.

Briess Pilsen Extra Light LME - 8 lbs, 2 oz
Belgian Pilsner - 3 lbs, 5 oz
Clear Candi Sugar - 1 lbs (recipe asks for half that, but I am going double for more alcohol)
Rice Syrup Solids - 1 lbs
Biscuit Malt - 3 oz
Weyermann Acidulated Malt - 1 oz

Brewers Gold hops - 1oz for 45 minutes
Styrian Goldings hops - 0.25oz for 15 minutes

My big question is the yeast. I have some Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey Ale.
Will it be able to handle 1.090 OG? Since I am doing this with LME and I've had problems with this yeast taking another ale made with same LME to anything below 1.020 (recipe calls for 1.016), can this yeast handle it?
Temp of the room is steady 72F

I have used xtra light DME to grow out the yeast from about teaspoon to what looks like quarter inch covering bottom of 64oz growler.

Would love to really knock this trippel out of the park, so would love to get some advice.

How are you oxygenating your wort?

Are you adding yeast nutrients?

Are you step mashing the pils malt?

Incremental feeding of the sugars as the yeast are actively fermenting?

To ensure a solid fermentation I would:

- Make a starter. Use Mr. Malty pitch calc to figure volume of starter. (Never mind, I reread your post and it looks like you already did!)

- Oxegenate the wort before pitching. I pour mine through a colendar into my bottling bucket. Then I drain it from the tap into the carboy. Creates lots of nice foam. Just make sure its cooled to the appropriate temp first.

- Leave the sucrose out of the boil and add in the sugar solution (~1 pint water/lb sugar) 3 days after fermentation starts. This will let your yeast establish themselves and ferment out a bunch of the maltose before taking on the rest of the gravity.

- Mash the Belgian Pils on the low side (148 degrees) to make it more fermentable.

See answers in bold

coryforsenate said:

How are you oxygenating your wort? I have a large aquarium pump and one of those specialty 2 micron aerating attachments. Usually I run the pump for 30 minutes or so.

Are you adding yeast nutrients? No

Are you step mashing the pils malt? Have no idea how to do this in a partial mash setup

Incremental feeding of the sugars as the yeast are actively fermenting? This will be my 4th beer, so I am not there yet with the advanced level stuff.

Click to expand...

Try adding some yeast nutrient. For really big beers, it can help eek out those last few points.

Try mashing the grain at 148 for 30 minutes and 154 for 30 minutes.

Sugar can inhibit maltose fermentation at high levels, so for really big beers with sugar, the incremental feeding lets the yeast eat the maltose and then later eat the sugar. Not sure what your setup is, but it'll also help prevent the krausen from coming out the blowoff. I've noticed on my big belgians that when I add the sugar after fermentation has slowed, it makes a huge krausen and will still come out of the blowoff hose even in a 6.5 gallon carboy.

I've never actually used extract, so I will defer to others for that.

Do you think I am shooting myself in the foot by using yeast I have grown out?
I've only done simple starters before. But I have done a two-stage starter (32oz to start and then another 32oz).

BTW, AHS uses Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey Ale in their Bornem Tripel (Brouwerij Bios-Van Steenberg) (18C) clone, though they recommend double pitching.

The yeast choice is fine - you just need a lot of it. Use one of the calculators to make sure you pitch enough.

But yes, you'll probably end up with a higher FG than the recipe calls for. That isn't the yeasts fault though - its the extract. They purposely make extract "average" for fermentability. eg by adding carapils.