Specialty IPA: Belgian IPA Houblon Chouffe aka HopChewy

crimelabguy said:

Can't wait to see your recipe for the gnome houblon. If it's anything like this recipe, it will be great!

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Kegged a batch today and I think its just about perfect:fro:
Just another batch using this yrs hops to fine tune and I'll PM it along.

Only 1 other person has a copy & he lives in Brussels,Belgium.

< edit to add pic >
Day 4 in the keg, still needs some time to get a puffy head & drop crystal clear


Day 5 getting clearer

I am brewing this as well. This weekend. Will let you know how it goes. Houblon thanks for all the help.

If you want to give me an early Bday present the houblon light would be great.

houblon, any thoughts on water? i have pretty hard water, so I was gonna cut it with distilled, probably add a bit of lactic acid.

maybe i'll just start with distilled and build up from there...

My water>
pH 7.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est 143
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.24
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.4 / 2.3
ppm
Sodium, Na 3
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 43
Magnesium, Mg 2
Total Hardness, CaCO3 116
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 1
Chloride, Cl 2
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 132
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 109
-------------------------------------------------

I hit it with lactic acid and play with the gypsum.
Mash ph target 5.2 - 5.3 to keep the beer light colored.


Today I'm brewing up 10gal of the gnome houblon

< edit to add gravity sample >

pretty blank water there, looks like i'll have to start from distilled.

or maybe I'll grab some milwaukee water...

made the starter last night. pretty excited to brew this. gonna step it up once more this week.

i need to build my ferm chamber this weekend...

so, i have my starter ready, homemade thermowell put together, ferm chamber all set...

but i don't have the software on this PC to re-program my controller....ug. not sure what i'm gonna do exactly. maybe just ferment upstairs, 67F ambient....

well, i got this brewed. and i reprogrammed my controller while brewing. and i build a ferm box while brewing. and i wired up my heater to the relay and controller while brewing. and i had exchange out my propane tank in the middle of the blizzard we got today while brewing.

long brewday...but it's done.

houblon do you keep it at 75F during the entire primary?

motobrewer said:

houblon do you keep it at 75F during the entire primary?

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Yes, I find its the best temp. Always check gravity before transfer - 1.006 - 1.008 is the numbers you need before secondary & dryhopping @ lager temps.


Right now I'm doing a test with the Gnome batch, one is dry hopping at room temps and the other is in the fridge as normal.

looks great. i undershot the OG by a lot, but I figured I would since i typically get around 70%. next time i'll bump up the malt/sugar

i cooled a bit to much and pitched around 70 but it didn't take long to climb to 75 and it's been there ever since.

came home today (48 hours after pitching) and the krausen has already fallen...is this normal? airlock activity has slowed.

it took off within 2 hours after pitching, i pitched a huge starter.

Yes the yeast goes thur stages, up-down,chunky followed by a slimy layer before fading away. Just don't even look at the beer for 14 days.. then check gravity LOL



Ever see this vid?

http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/images/bigfootwindows.wmv

so, i still have another week of lagering, but i realized my primary temp was at 79F.

my controller was set up for a silicon element, as that's what i have to control my fridge. but i grabbed a nickel element to use in my thermowell/ferm heater. so while the controller thought it was controlling to 75F, it was really controlling to 79F.

i noticed at racking it was a little "hot" as kabouter mentioned, but Houblon is a little hot as well if i remember right

motobrewer said:

>thought it was controlling to 75F, it was really controlling to 79F.

i noticed at racking it was a little "hot" as kabouter mentioned, but Houblon is a little hot as well if i remember right

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Ouch! a couple yrs ago a guy on NB had the same problem and found it took a few months to mellow.

Houblon isn't hot, fresh it was sharp from the columbus but never hot.

If you think its going to be hot from the spike let it lager abit longer, it should be ready to drink at wk 5 when everything goes as planned.

-
My Gnome Houblon test (warm vs lager-> dry hop temps) show the best is lager temps for dry hopping. Warm temps give the beer a dirty hop profile that overpowers the low gravity batch, thus you don't get the nice yeasty aroma , just lots of spicey hops.

Kinda kills the nice subtle balance that makes Houblon so nice.

Had a question about your final gravity of 1.006.

You start with 4.88 kg (10.75 lbs) of Pilsener Malt and .91 kg (2 lbs) of Beet Sugar and get an OG of 1.078.

This roughly means you started out with 390 Gravity Units (92 from Beet Sugar and 288 from the Pilsener after about 75% efficiency).

Since the batch size is 5 gallons, the final gravity needs to end up at about 30 Gravity Units to equal 1.006.

Since the Beet Sugar fully ferments, that means the yeast would have to take the Pilsener from 288 to 30.

This would be an 89.6% attenuation rate. White Labs list the attenuation rate at 78%-85%.

Are you seeing that you get ~90% when fermenting at 75 degrees?

joe4444 said:

Are you seeing that you get ~90% when fermenting at 75 degrees?

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copied from >https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/wyeast-3522-belgian-ardennes-info-228923/

FYI using up to 15% sugar I always get 91-93% attenuation with wlp550 -wy3522 all below 77F.

kegged it this weekend - really nice! any hotness has faded, i can't wait for it to carb!

did a side-by-side this weekend. sorry, no pics.

color is close, mine is slightly lighter. chouffe is a bit sweeter, but mine has a cleaner finish. My OG was lower than expected (1.069), I imagine if i were to hit that it would have been very close. hopping seems to be spot-on.

gonna brew this again within the next month or so. fantastic tripel. my only issue now is balancing, I have a 20' 3/16" line on and it still pours foamy at 22psi (3.4vols at 40F).

A little trick I found is hit the keg with 35psi for a week and then bleed down to a normal serving pressure. The beer will pour better and will be spritzy like a good bottled condition beer.

alright Houblon, now that you've conquered this...what about:

tripel karmeliet!?

motobrewer said:

tripel karmeliet!?

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Sorry can't help you there as I never liked Karmeliet, always thought is was too sweet. Some time ago I did a side by side tasting of a handful of triples and the sweetness was too much for my taste.

yes, i agree it is sweet, but in a fruit kind of sweet, like apple/pear.

Houblon- How much lactic acid and gypsum do you typically add?

Just brewed this Thursday night. Used a blend of the Wyeast and White Labs. OG came in at 1.083, so a little high, but I can't wait to taste this sucker. Aquarium heater holding fermentation at 75 and the airlock is bubbling away. This was the first beer that my wife helped me brew. Thanks for the recipe Houblon!

Any chance you'll ever post that Gnome Houblon recipe?

reserve judgement until after lagering.

it really is a fantastic clone.

Wanted to update after lagering period... This is one hell of a beer! The interplay between the yeast and hops is perfect, with both showing up but neither one overpowering the other.

I will be brewing this again and am also interested in knocking back the recipe to a more moderate strength. I'm interested if anyone on this thread has had success with a smaller houblon beer.

I would guess right off the bat that eliminating the sugar addition would be the first step and subsequently lowering the bittering addition by a small amount to keep the malt/hop balance in check would be second.

I wouldn't just cut all the sugar out in an effort to make this a lower ABV beer. You need the sugar in order to make this as dry as it needs to be. Plug everything into your software and cut back on the base malt as well as the sugar, proportionally, until you get to your desired OG.

As far as hops, I would just make a note of what the OG:BU ratio of the original recipe and target that same ratio once you've removed some base malt and sugar.

Hope that helps

Houblon said:

Sorry can't help you there as I never liked Karmeliet, always thought is was too sweet. Some time ago I did a side by side tasting of a handful of triples and the sweetness was too much for my taste.

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Okay then... how about a LA CHOUFFE clone??

I'm planning on brewing this tomorrow, pretty excited.

I'm making a few changes.

5.5 Gallon Batch (What was your total water volume for 5 gallons?)

Magnum pellets instead of Columbus (Warrior also available)
Cascade pellets instead of Amarillo (Summit also available)

I'm also considering making a Light Candi Syrup for the 20 minute sugar addition.

I would really like to brew this one, but I don't really think I can step mash. Any thoughts on what would be the effect if I just do a single infusion?

Robin0782 said:

I would really like to brew this one, but I don't really think I can step mash. Any thoughts on what would be the effect if I just do a single infusion?

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Step mashes are actually pretty easy...start thick, then add boiling water to raise, and finish thin. Here's a great calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/

But, a long (75-90 min) single infusion at 153 should work great.

Brewed this last week and looking forward to the final product. Step mash is too much work. so i mashed at 153 for a while. Ended up collecting a little too much wort, so OG was 1.072, but the upside will be an extra 1/2 gallon of finished product. Blowoff tube was definitely necessary, but it's calmed down considerably after 2 days of heavy krausen. I'm going to "lager" in my garage in MA, so it will probably not wind up as clear. I'll report back.

I'm planning on giving this a shot sometime soon... I've got T-58 dry yeast on hand, will that work?

I am seriously considering brewing this! But, i dont have a fermentation chamber.
Is it okay to just leave it in primary for a month? I can add some irish moss to clear it a little bit at least.

You can totally brew it without temperature control. However, if you want the Belgiany character, the high temp is necessary. I also think that Belgian yeasts are more finicky about temperature changes - I've had yeast flocculate early when cooled too much, before I was comfortable just running things at a really high temp.

A possible solution is to strap a heating pad to your carboy / bucket with an ace bandage. I'm currently using this treatment with a partigyle sweet stout that won't fit in my ferm chamber (even though I swear I built that thing to accommodate 2 vessels - sigh). To be fair, I don't really care that much how the sweet stout turns out, as its just the little brother of the RIS. If you run the pad for an hour in the morning and an hour at night, you might be able to keep things somewhere near 75. Adding a blanket would probably help.

Brewed 11 gallons today. Samples tasted great and hit numbers spot on. It was actually my best brew day yet and it was 19 degrees today. Maybe cold weather made me more hyper-vigilant.

whats the boil size? Can i make this beer without the lagering? I dont have a fridge that fits my fermentation bucket.

aleksander9 said:

whats the boil size? Can i make this beer without the lagering? I dont have a fridge that fits my fermentation bucket.

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I think Houblon addresses this. I suspect it can be done without lagering. I don't think the product will taste the same.

I don't know where you live. I'm in New England, and have had three solid weeks of good lagering temps in my garage.

It's a normal length boil, so however much you need to collect to wind up with 5.5 gallons.