Dubbel Recipe - First

Hey guys,

I have been working on this dubbel recipe because i thought it was time to graduate to my own recipes from kits... I guess I just wanted to get some feedback on hat anyone thought. A couple questions I have concern hop additions. A lot of recipes that i've found have no aroma hop additions. Should I follow this. I was also thinking about steeping the czech saaz for two minutes after the boil. Additionally, I was thinking of adding a little wheat extract for head retention and what not, but I thought I had a bit too much going on for my first time already... OK here it is:

dubbel
5 gals

Expected OG: 1.069
Expected FG: 1.014
Expected ABV: 7.4 %
Boil Duration: 60 mins


German CaraMunich II 0.50 lb Steeped
Belgian Special B 0.50 lb Steeped
Belgian Biscuit Malt 0.50 lb Steeped
US Chocolate Malt 0.25 lb Steeped
Extract - Light Dried Malt Extract 6.00 lb Start Of Boil
Sugar - Candi Sugar Pale 1.00 lb

Hops:
German Tradition 5.5% 1.50 oz Pellet Hops 60 Min From End
Czech Saaz 3.0 % 1.00 oz 0.3 Pellet Hops 2 Min From End

Yeast:
Wyeast 1214-Belgian Ale

I believe your color, IBU'S and ABV are pretty much within the guidelines for that style of brew. I'm not really familiar with this type of beer so that's all I can contribute.

Looks like it'll be a tasty beer. I'm not a fan of candi sugars, mostly because I don't think they're worth the added expense, not because of anything wrong with their flavor.

In Belgian beers, the yeast is one of the most important decisions you make, in my opinion, so I'd definitely try to get as much information about each possible yeast option.

I guess that's true of any beer, too, but I think it's more so true of Belgians.

Planning to do a dubbel soon, recipe is similar to yours except instead of caramunich i'm using some belgian aromatic and also different hops (Styrian Goldings and Herbsucker). Also using a little bit of dark candi sugar syrup, and simply table sugar. I'm normally not a fan of using candi sugars due to the expense either, especially for light/clear when I think table sugar will do the job, but I've heard that the dark syrup is actually legit, I think Jamil Z talks about it in his Brewing Classic Styles book, which i loosely based the recipe off. The 1214 is Chimay's yeast i believe which should be pretty good, I'm using the 1762 which is allegedly the Rochefort strain. I'm planning to pitch at about 64 degrees, and ferment it at that for a couple days, then try and ramp up the temperature to about 72 or so. I currently have a Tripel on that same schedule so we'll see how that works. Since i don't have a secondary I plan on letting it sit in the fermenter for a month, then bottling and aging it for a longggg time.

I think I might have gone with the dark candi sugar if I wasn't concerned so much with keeping the color in standard dubbel range. Though I could have dropped that bit of chocolate malt...

I do wonder how that will taste.

Does anyone think the chocolate malt is a bit of overkill?

timothywilliam said:

Does anyone think the chocolate malt is a bit of overkill?

Click to expand...

I personally think you could do without it. If you dropped it from the recipe you could go with dark candi sugar instead and stay within the proper color range. Pale candi sugar is somewhat pointless anyway.

I think the chocolate malt in a small quantity would be okay. I used a small amount of chocolate along with dark candi sugar. I ended up using some caramunich as well and accidentally added a bit more biscuit than i was supposed to (just 1/8 of a pound more, mistook it for aromatic... oh well). It's in the fermenter now, we'll see how it turns out.

I hear both sides of using and not using the Belgium Candi sugar. However in this style of beer I believe going with pale malt or extract and the D2 sugar cut with some white sugar only.

The chocolate malt will give you color and flavor. If you are dead set on using malts instead of sugar I might try a carafa for color and NO to little flavor.

Good luck and let us know what you used and how it came out.

Cheers