Gouden Carolus Classic

Hey friends, I'm trying to break down a recipe for the Gouden Carolus Classic from the Het Anker brewery in Belgium. Anyone familiar with it?

This is what I've gathered from the brewery and BLAM,

OG will be 19 degrees Plato, and 8.5%abv
Needing an 80% attenuation.

BU/GU ratio is 1.4-1.5, which should yield about 28 IBU's.

The brewery claims to use "Only Belgian Hops" which I'm not sure which hops those would possibly be. Another brew from their brewery does use Challenger hops (English) though.

No idea which yeast to use, I'm just guessing something in the White Labs 500 series range. Fermentation temps would be 68F for the first couple days and raised up to 77F. Beer should come out with some noticeable phenols and fruity tones (500?).

Probably candi sugared to have such low IBU's, remain sweet, and not get fairly malty.

I'm guessing a Belgian Pilsen malt base with some higher L Crystal malts to obtain the Ruby Red color. Or maybe a light touch of a dehusked debittered black?

Any ideas or input would be fantastic.

I suppose for the yeast, I should just work up some scrapings from the bottom of a couple bottles since it's all refermented in there. Is there any real way once that is done to identify a commercially available strain version of it? Or would I have to keep it stored and keep growing it?

I have tried all of their brews. Visit the brewery and restaurant and stayed at their Hotel in October last year. What I remember is (according to the guy of the guided tour who I think is not an authority or anything like that) is that their hops came from Poperinge in West Flanders. Belgian hops refers to the procedence of the hops and not the kind of hops. In Poperinge they have Challenger, Hallertau, Target mainly but several others. I would go with Challenger and Hallertau. Their base malt is also belgian pilsner type of course. I would use some dark candy syrup a little crystal malt and special B. Yeast: I think your best option is to go and try to harvest some of their yeast from bottles. If that is to much work my personal choice will be to go with wyeast 3787 and ferment in the upper temp range (70+ F) I think that can get you around 78% attenuation.
I hope this helps. And once again I apologize for my english.

Thanks for the reply, glad to hear someone else out there knows something about this.

What I did do is harvest the yeast from two GCC bottles. I came up with a recipe I thought would work which was a modified weaker version of a Chimay Blue (I think they taste somewhat similar) and tossed in all the yeast I grew.

I just recently racked it into a carboy for some clarifying a week ago and will bottle next week. I'm not doing the lagering period GC talks about because I live in Houston and don't really have that ability now.

But I did rinse the yeast from the primary cake and trub and have some of it in 4 ball pint jars so I can try the brew again to try and get closer once this current brew is ready to taste. Let me know if you'll be brewing this stuff, I can always overnight ship some of the yeast.

simonbones said:

Thanks for the reply, glad to hear someone else out there knows something about this.

What I did do is harvest the yeast from two GCC bottles. I came up with a recipe I thought would work which was a modified weaker version of a Chimay Blue (I think they taste somewhat similar) and tossed in all the yeast I grew.

I just recently racked it into a carboy for some clarifying a week ago and will bottle next week. I'm not doing the lagering period GC talks about because I live in Houston and don't really have that ability now.

But I did rinse the yeast from the primary cake and trub and have some of it in 4 ball pint jars so I can try the brew again to try and get closer once this current brew is ready to taste. Let me know if you'll be brewing this stuff, I can always overnight ship some of the yeast.

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Thank you for the yeast offering but I live in Spain and I don't think it will arrive healthy. Let know how the brew turns out... I'm also glad that someone else its trying ti came up with a clone of IMHO one of the greatest examples of belgium brewing. Problably I'll brew this when I run out of my last belgian dubbels. Brew on