Belgian Tripel Help

I would like to brew a partial mash belgian tripel. Many of the recipes I've seen include coriander seed and orange peel, I don't think these are typical for a tripel. Thoughts?
I'm thinking about 12 lbs pale DME, .5-1 lb of crystal. 1oz of hallertauer at 60 and 1 oz at 10 mins.
Not sure on the yeast yet, any suggestions there would be appreciated.

never brewed a tripple, but i think those hops look a bit low also i think most i have seen use some sugars to help them attune better.

Tripel's have NO crystal. I use WY3787. Check my drop down recipe.

I would use the lightest Pils malt extract...if possible. I wouldn't use Crystal but I would prob use some Carapils...and maybe a little Aromatic if I wanted to add something else. And the sugar of course (at least a pound). Just regular table (cane) sugar is fine. IMLE, adding the sugar to the fermenter right after high krausen yields a brew with a lower FG, drier finish, and with less 'alcohol' in the flavor profile. You'll want this beer to finish lower than you'd expect...the alcohol increases the perception of sweetness.

The Wyeast 3787 and WLP530 are supposedly the Westmalle strain.
The Wyeast 1388 and WLP570 are supposedly the Duvel strain.
The Wyeast 1214 and WLP500 are supposedly the Chimay strain.

IMLE, the Westmalle strain should be the spiciest of the three (Tripels are more spicy than fruity).

If you want to stick to the style, ditch the spices and crystal malt.

You will need to mash some Pilsner malt if you want to do a partial mash trippel. As far as other fermentables, go with about 20% table sugar and get the rest of your gravity points from Extra Light DME.

Increase your bittering addition to yield at least 20 IBU. I don't think an ounce of Hallertau at 60 minutes is going to get you that.

Any of the yeasts that SpanishCastle recommended will work well as long as you make a starter and aerate well. Good luck!

Thanks for all the responses. I knew the sugar thing just forgot to include it in my list above. I didnt think the spices sounded like they should be in a tripel. I'll go back to the drawing board and come up with something using Pils extract, maybe a little carapils for a fresher taste and sugar.

LakeErieBrew, good to hear from another NE Ohioan, I'm in Strongsville.

If you use small (and I do mean small) amounts of spices it makes for a tasty Tripel. It will accentuate the spices of the yeast. You really shouldn't use any crystal or C-Pils if brewing with DME. It will not be necessary. There are plenty of unfermentables in the DME. The Belgians add sugar to dry out the beer. Unfermentables defeat this purpose.

Good to see another Ohioan on HBT.

Carapils is crystal malt. It would be counterproductive to include in a trippel due to adding more unfermentables to your wort. The goal is to achieve ridiculously high attenuation. That's why it is recommended to use a large percentage of sugar and basically just Pilsner malt.

How big is your pot? If you could manage to mash 5 or 6 pounds of Pilsner malt at about 145-149 degrees for 60-90 minutes, I think you could have really nice results. This would reduce the amount of DME you would need.

I think that Poobah made a good point about the fact that since you're using extract, Carapils may not be the best choice. But Carapils is certainly not counter-productive in an AG recipe. A small amount of Carapils is pretty standard imo. My 1.088 Tripel #2 finished @ 1.008 and it was 12# Pils/.5# Carapils/1.75# cane sugar...and I did a decoction on that one which makes it even less fermentable.

We can agree that Carapils won't be necessary in the OPs case, and agree to disagree in an AG version. It doesn't make sense to me to purposely add unfermentables, even if it's just a little bit, when the goal is to attenuate 90%+.

If it works for you, go for it. That's what it's all about.

OK, sounds good. I don't look at it as the goal is to attenuate 90%+...the goal is to make a good beer. I do think that 90% attenuation is a good number...but as I illustrated above...even with .5# Carapils and using a decoction mash...I still got ~91% attenuation. IMO, there has to be something left behind besides alcohol/water.

Thanks. Glad you two were able to agree to disagree.

LakeErie, I've been doing a full boil but splitting it between two 5 gallon pots. I could probably mash 5 or 6 pounds of 2 row pilsner then use 6 lbs of extra light extract along with 1 lb of sugar. Although now I'm thinking maybe I should just brew an IPA and hold off on the tripel until I've built an ag set up.

What would be the process of mashing 6 lbs of grain without a proper mashtun? Would it be efficient enough to just use a grain bag and keep the water in the proper range? One of my 20qt brew pots has a spigot installed in it, I could probably build a ss mesh manifold pretty easily.

You got it, the process is really easy. Go to Home Depot or Lowes and find the big paint strainer bags. Once you put the grain in the water at the proper temperature, put the lid on the pot and come back in an hour. You will probably lose a few degrees, but it's not a huge deal. Deathbrewer made an awesome tutorial here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

If you're feeling adventurous, you could actually do this all-grain with two 5 gallon pots. To me it's actually less of a hassle to brew on the stove with all grain. Somehow I always manage to make a mess when I use DME. It sticks to everything. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/

So LakeErie, the links you posted above have convinced me to try AG loosely following DeathBrewer's EZ stovetop AG. I was thinking I would do something like 8#Belgian Pils, 8#Belgian Pale and 1#Candy Sugar. At 65% efficiency this comes in at 1.084, at the higher end for Tripels but I figure I may not hit 65% so I'm shooting high. With this grain bill though the calculator is telling me I'll miss the target fg of 1.014 by coming in at 1.020. How can I keep the OG up but lower my FG?

To get a high OG and low FG, you need to create a highly fermentable wort. This is achieved by mashing at a low temperature and using sugar.

You're not going to be able to mash 16 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon pot though. Cut back to about 12 pounds of grain and bump the sugar up to 2 pounds. This won't get you 1.084, but it should get you pretty close 1.075, which is trippel territory.

You don't really need to buy the Candi Sugar. Plain old table sugar works just fine and it's way less expensive.

Yea, I wasn't going to mash all 16 lbs in one 5 gal pot. I figured I'd do 8lbs in each of two pots with 2.5 gals of water each. Mash for 60 mins at the lower end of the scale as you suggested, shoot for 148 to 150. Sparge each bag of grains in one 6 gallon bucket with 3.5 gals (the same 3 gals). I figure I'll lose .75 gals to the grains in each pot so I'll end up with 7 gals to boil. I've got a nice gas stove so boiling 7 gals down to 5 gal in 2 pots in 60 mins will be pretty easy.

But I will cut back the grains some and add more sugar. I appreciate the tip on the table sugar. I've been seeing some recipes that call for adding some or all of the sugar part way through the fermentation so maybe I'll boil one pound and put one pound in when I rack to the secondary.

What I really need to do is just order the grains and get going. I could tinker with the recipe for ever...

So here's what I ended up with...
7# Belgian Pils
7# Belgian Pale
1# Table Sugar immediately after boil
1# Table Sugar when racking to 2ndary
2oz Styrian Goldings 60 mins
.5oz Strisselspalt 5 mins
.5oz Strisselspalt 1 min
Wyeast 3787 .5 gallon starter

I used my derivative of DeathBrewer's https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/. This was my first attempt at all grain and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I ended up with 72% effeciency and I kept the mash temp down so I could hit the low fg range of a tripel.

I just racked it to 2ndary tonight and my gravity was 1.014 before I added the 1lb of sugar. I can't wait till I've bottled and aged this.

Awesome! Let me know how it turns out.

So, my tripel is ready to bottle. I took the fg the last few days and it seems to be stuck at 1.012. My question is how do I account for the lb of sugar I added during the fermentation? My initial gravity was 1.080 and my final was 1.012 which puts my APV at 8.9 but I added another pound of sugar that was not accounted for in the initial gravity but obviously has added to the fg. How do I account for this when determining the APV?

This batch has now been in bottles for over 4 wks stored at about 68 degrees. It doesn't seem to be carbonating. I boiled 2/3 cup of dme in a quart of water and mixed it in just before bottling but no carbonation to speak of yet. Wyeast says the yeast is good up to 12% abv and the way I figure it I was 9-9.5 at bottling so I don't think the yeasties died.
Any idea why I'm not getting any carbonation? Could I open pour the bottles out, re-prime and bottle again?
Thanks

Tripels do not have spices at all.

Some will use a little bit of crystal.. but not much.. maybe .25lbs.

You need more hops though.. get up around 30 IBUs.

As far as the grain bill, you pretty much just need about 85%+ Pilsner/Pale 10-15% sugar maybe a little bit of wheat or munich. Tripels are pretty basic.. you don't need a lot of different stuff.

Patience... Big beers take longer to carbonate, also, warm them up, dont be afraid to get them into the 80s at this point. I would never pour out, but if after 6 months they still are undercarbed, might try adding fresh yeast.

So in the end this beer tasted great but never did carbonate much. I'm going to retry it in a couple weeks using champagne yeast at bottling time.

Im going to be botteling my Tripel in a few weeks.

I think with this type of beer anyway, carbonation isn't as important.

syd138 said:

I think with this type of beer anyway, carbonation isn't as important.

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no. tripels must be highly carbonated. go with 3.5 to 4 volumes.

I agree it should be highly carbed. What do you mean 3.5 or 4 volumes?

Yeah Im going to heavily carb it.

But what Im saying is that even flat.. Tripels still taste good. Its a wonderful beer

SpanishCastleAle said:

I think that Poobah made a good point about the fact that since you're using extract, Carapils may not be the best choice. But Carapils is certainly not counter-productive in an AG recipe. A small amount of Carapils is pretty standard imo. My 1.088 Tripel #2 finished @ 1.008 and it was 12# Pils/.5# Carapils/1.75# cane sugar...and I did a decoction on that one which makes it even less fermentable.

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I know I'm late here, but I just wanted to add my .02 - I think the point is that it is kind of backwards thinking to add carapils to leave unfermentables and then add sugar to make your wort more fermentable. You could just use more pilsner malt and decrease the amount of sugar. If we are talking traditional tripels, I would disagree that carapils is standard. IIRC from Brew Like a Monk, I can't think of a Trappist brewery that uses carapils in their tripel. Same goes for spices - leave them for the witbeers.

New-B-Brewer said:

I agree it should be highly carbed. What do you mean 3.5 or 4 volumes?

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it's a measure of how much carbonation there is. 2 volumes is a moderately low carbonation level and 4 volumes is very, very carbonated. be careful approaching 4 volumes though because most american beer bottles are not rated for that level of internal pressure. (the little stubby belgian bottles are much, much stronger which is why hyper-carbonated beers like Duvel use them).

Don't pay attention to their style recommendations (they are off), but you can use this calculator to achieve the desired number of volumes of carbonation: http://tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html