Boulevard Smokestack Sixth Glass/Bourbon Barrel Quad

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xeerohour

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So, I'm attempting to formulate a clone recipe for my first belgian beer.

Specifically, I'm attempting to mimic Boulevard's Bourbon Barrel Quad, which is their Sixth Glass Quad aged in Bourbon Barrels over some cherries.

Nice simple place to start, right? :)

Per their website (boulevard.com), I have a pretty solid idea how to pull off the sixth glass, the only question is what quantities I need for each of the relative ingredients.

Here's what I had in mind for a five gallon batch:

15lb Pale 2-Row
2lb Pale Wheat
.5lb CaraVienne
.5lb Special B
1lb Belgian Dark Candi Sugar
1lb Brown Sugar

.67oz Magnum - 60min
1oz Saphir - 10min

They list the sixth glass at 22 IBUs, and per my calculations this hits exactly.

They list the color as 73.2 EBC, which is basically 28 SRM, and I calculate this out at 30 SRM, so it's just a touch too dark. To get around this, I could probably pull some of the brown or belgian sugars in favor of some corn sugar, but I'm not sure if that's really necessary.

I've dropped the belgian dark candi syrup as I can't get ahold of that locally - I'm trying to get the sugar/flavor/color out of that by bumping up the belgian dark crystal to a full pound.

I'm thinking I'll probably give this a shot this coming weekend - the only real question I had is whether to scale down the 2-row in favor of some additional sugars, or if I'm comfortable with the current proportions.


After about 2-3 weeks in primary, I was planning on racking this over onto some bourbon (about a cup), a few ounces of oak chips, and some cherries, in order to pull in that aged flavor that boulevard does so well with this beer.

Those of you with some additional experience with Quads have any suggestions?
 
The biggest thing I've learned from brewing Quads is you're going to be fighting attenuation more than you would for other styles with the same starting gravity. I'd aim for 80-85% attenuation.

http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm

That site is awesome if you haven't seen it. I would use Turbinado instead of brown sugar if you can find it. If not, it's not a big deal.

I agree with bumping up the amount of sugar to more like 20%.

I haven't had the Boulevard quad, but most authentic Belgian beers get a lot of their flavor from the syrups they use. You can make your own with some table sugar and DAP, but it's hard to get the really dark chocolatey flavors from homemade candi syrup.
 
Interesting - I hadn't realized my attenuation would drop like that. Good to know.

I'll pitch a starter - haven't actually ever done that before, even on other large (8%+) beers, but this one will be by far the biggest.

As to the sugars - your recommendation would be to add a pound of corn sugar to bump up the sugars, and use a pound of belgian candi syrup as well?

Doing that, I could shorten the 2-row down to 13 pounds, and still get an OG of around 1.110

The only problem with that is that I bump the color up to around 34 SRM, which is darker than I was shooting for (wanted around 28).

I'd wonder if I might not be better off simply dropping the hard candi sugar and using the syrup instead. I could shorten the quantities on both, but I'd prefer not to have to buy spend the extra if I could avoid it.

Then, I wind up with something like the following:
13lb 2-row
2lb Wheat
.5lb CaraVienne
.5lb Special B
2lb Brown Sugar
1lb Dark Candi Syrup
1lb Corn sugar

which gets me roughly 1.115 post boil. Even at 70% attenuation, I'm between 10-11% ABV, which is what I'm shooting for.
 
Quadruples are the hardest beer I've ever brewed, and the only beer I've tried to make that turned out undrinkable (twice).

A 1.115 OG with only 70% attenuation would be undrinkably sweet to me. That's an FG of like 1.035. For the style, you'll want an FG between 1.010 – 1.024, but I'd try to get it under 1.020.

Avery's Quad is 10%ABV, but their OG is only 1.093. From Boulevard's site, their OG is 21 and their FG is 2.6 Plato. That's about 1.087 for the OG and 1.010 for the FG. Those are pretty typical of commercial versions. Very high attenuation, which is hard by itself, and also a pretty high OG, which makes the yeast have to work harder.

To replicate those stats at home, that means a long mash, a cold mash (149F), a thin mash (2qt/#), and a very long boil. In my setup, that much mash liquor takes about 4 hours to boil down to my target volume.

You'll also want a big starter. Like 8 liters big. You really can't pitch too much.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

I'd scale the gravity way down from where you are, keep the sugars (corn or table, either works) at around 20% of the grist. Add the sugar when fermentation starts to lag to squeeze the most attenuation you can get out of it.

If you can get the candi syrup, use it. I wouldn't worry about SRM going too high. St. Bernardus 12 is like 37 SRM.
 
Thanks for all the advice, Nateo. Especially thanks for noticing the gravity numbers on their site which I completely overlooked!

I did some research on yeast strains and attenuation last night, and it seems like I might actually have a shot at approaching boulevard's gravity numbers.

However, since I KNOW my efficiency will be lower, and I suspect my attenuation will be lower, I'm going to build myself in a little bit of "fluff".

Toward that end, I think the following grain bill will hit me an OG of 1.089 (assuming efficiency of 71%, which was the result on my last big beer):

10lb 2-row
2lb Wheat
.5lb CaraVienne
.5lb Special B
1lb Brown Sugar
1lb Dark Candi Crystal
1lb Dark Candi Syrup

.67oz Magnum 60 mins
1oz Hallertauer (sub for Saphir) 10min

Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity Yeast (with a nice big starter)

If I do a step mash of 146 for 45 minutes, then 156 for 45 minutes, it appears I'll get the best results as well.

One thing I can't do is mash real thin - I have a 30 quart mash tun/brewpot combo, which means at 13 pounds of grain, I can only do about 5 gallons of water, max. Depending on how it looks, I may sparge extra to accumulate some additional runnings I'll boil down.

I plan on adding the candi syrup as fermentation starts to slow as that should mix in nicely, but I wasn't sure about the other sugars - wouldn't I need to add them during the boil in order to get them mixed into suspension properly?

On that note- to agitate a fermentation that's active, what do people normally do? Simply shake the carboy? Or do people sanitize something like a wooden dowel and use that to stir?

Even if I don't hit this exactly, I'm just really excited to be trying something so completely new for me. That, and the fact that as SevenFields says, the BBQ IS an awesome beer. If I can get anywhere close, it'll be a great winter warmer. The trick will be having the patience to let it age properly :)
 
On my big beers I'll do 3.3g batches because of the volume limitations. That also makes it easier to get a high pitch rate from a single smack pack.

The step mash is a good way to go if you can't do a thinner mash.

You can add the sugar once fermentation is going by reserving a small amount of water from the boil, and then dissolving the sugar in that in a boil later. I wouldn't add more than a pound at a time. You wouldn't need to dissolve the syrup, if you're using something to stir it you may not need to pre-dissolve the brown sugar. You will definitely have to dissolve the rock candy.

As to how much water you need, I don't have real solid numbers. I've read that you need at least 750ml of water to dissolve 1000g of sugar.

To agitate it, I just kinda swirl it around. It's easy with a bucket, you just twirl it on edge a little.
 
Just picked up all the supplies at the local shop - going to be brewing this one on Sunday. I haven't been this excited about a beer in a while :)
 
To get your FG lower (1.012-1.016 range), could you pitch a champagne yeast and a bit of sugar if the gravity gets stuck too high ?
 
Try emailing the brewery, they are pretty nice people.

You can get the candi syrup online, do it.

Don't forget the carbonation, smokestack beers are HIGHLY carbonated (even the IPA). Boulevard's excellent website lists carbonation for every beer both as volumes and grams per liter.

I am almost positive I saw palettes of oregon fruits cherry puree at Boulevard, I assume that is what they are using in BBQ.
 
Well, I made a few mistakes, and I think they bit me.

The biggest mistake I made was I misjudged the temperature of my grain, and rather than hitting my first step at 146, I found myself mashing at 149. To get around this I decided to just mash for 90 minutes at 149 instead of the step mash.

The second mistake I made was that I wound up with closer to 5.5 gallons instead of 5 gallons, which was the volume I used for all my calculations.

At least partially due to those, I wound up with an OG (without the brown sugar and dark candi syrup added) of 1.061, and it should have been 1.071. So, I'm not going to hit the 10% I hoped for, that's for sure. (When I add the sugars in a couple days here I should bump up the gravity about 15 points.)

However - the color looks good, the smell (especially from the hallertauer hops) is awesome, and I have high hopes that even if I failed to make a true clone of the BBQ, at least I've made myself a solid belgian beer - and I even have an extra half gallon to drink!
 
None of those problems sound that bad to me. Avery mashes at 149 so you should be fine there. You could always up the sugar a little bit to help the ABV, but it'll probably make a fine beer despite not going exactly to plan.
 
Xeerohour inspired me to make another quad today. I did my first decoction mash ever, at 146/158. I got 88% efficiency, which was way more than I expected, so I hit my target OG without any sugar additions.

If you have most of a day to kill brewing, I really recommend the decoction mash. It's too early to say how the finished product tastes, but the aroma was killer, and it gave the wort a lot of color, so I know there were some Maillard reactions going on. I only used pale and a touch of special B, and it was the best smelling/tasting wort I've ever made. I'm going to start doing decoctions on all my beers now.
 
Update on this one, for those of you who care...

Two days after brewing, last Tuesday, I stirred up 2 cups of water with a pound of brown sugar, boiled it, chilled it, and added it and the belgian candi syrup to the primary fermenter. That kicked off a real mess, filling up the blowoff tube, and it's been fermenting strong for over a week since then - by far the longest primary fermentation I've ever had.

The intiall temps stayed in the 60s, and I've allowed them to ramp up to the upper 70s/low 80s over the past week (really, the climate did it for me, I've just been lucky).

Ten days into fermentation, I've run out of patience: I finally pulled a "gravity reading". I put that in quotes because I really just wanted to sample it. :)

Current gravity: 1.015 - with it still fermenting, it's not unreasonable to think I could hit my 1.010 target. Thank you Nateo for the advice!

As to the taste - I really like it. It has a much fruitier flavor than I was shooting for, with a strong banana flavor, and I'm hoping that particular note settles out. It's also much less harsh on the tongue than Boulevard's version - I'd have to guess they used even more sugar than I did in order to get that harsher alcohol note.

For those of you that are curious, this big beautiful beer has gone from looking like this ten days ago:
IMG_0021-e1287023315816.jpg


To looking like this now:
IMG_0023-e1287023330727.jpg


Thinking I'd best let this one sit for at least a week after fermenation stops to clean itself up before I rack it into the bourbon, oak chips, and cherries.
 
You inspired me to brew another quad. Here's my recipe, if you're interested:

OG: 1.095
FG: 1.010
Boil:
Pale - 72.8%
Special B - 5.2%
Primary:
Turbinado - 14.2%
D2 - 7.8%

Double decoction with 146/158 sacc rests. 88% efficiency, which caught me off-guard. I actually overshot my OG even without the sugar additions. I started out at 1.101, so when I did my sugar additions, I added enough water to dilute it down to my target OG.

Pitched onto yeast cake from my dubbel, 3787. Hit my FG within 2 weeks without any issues or effort. A bit of hot alcohol in my sample, with a nice fruitiness. Not quite as much chocolate as I wanted. Next time I think I'll scale back the base malt, up the D2, and aim for a <10% ABV brew.
 
Quick update on this one - brewed it on 10/3, and fermentation appeared to finally finish up this past week.

On Saturday, 10/23, I took a gravity reading and it was at 1.009! Excellent attenuation.

I racked it over on top of 48oz of cherry puree, 8oz of Makers Mark bourbon, and a handful of american oak chips.

It's still a bit fruity for my tastes - I'm not a big Belgian fan, but I always liked the BBQ for its smoothness and alcohol burn. Time to let it age and see how it turns out.
 
The mouthfeel wasn't the same, but the aroma is dead on cherries. If I had to do it again, I would use more Crystal malt to give it a more full body.
 
How long did you keep it on the cherries/oak? I just had a bottle of the BBQ a couple of weeks ago (a buddy had it in his cellar). Fantastic beer.
 
Three months: from 10/24 to 1/24. I got good flavor from the cherries, a light hint of bourbon, but it could use a bit more oak (I just used a couple ounces of American chips). There's so much going on in that beer, the amount of bourbon and oak that were appropriate in other beers seems almost too little in this one.

Overall, I love this beer - the original and my clone. I just wish my clone had better mouthfeel and perhaps a bit more oak. Doesn't make it any less a solid beer.
 
How is this one after it's had awhile to age?

My parents always get a ton of delicious tart cherries off of their trees and the last couple years I have been incorporating them into a beer, so I think I would like to do a PM version of your recipe.

Do you have any idea of what type of extract would be good to supplement the grain on a beer like this? There is definitely enough info in this thread that I could figure something out using Beersmith, but advice from someone more experienced than myself is always helpful.
 
Unfortunately I've never brewed extract, so I really don't know.

I do plan on breaking out a bottle in the next week or so, I'll be sure to let you know how it's aging. It's been about a month since I last tried it.
 
Cracked open a bottle tonight, drinking it and watching some football.

It's just under 11 months old, and still is really solid. It's got a great cherry aroma, a lightness and tartness to the mouthfeel, and very very drinkable. It helps that it's bottle conditioned, and not bottled from the keg. It's also taken a while, but the carbonation level is where I want it, just a touch higher than a normal non-Belgian. it has ZERO head, though. Not sure why. Could be the glass.

Overall, I'm really pleased with the beer, and like it even better now. The oak has really faded, and it's actually a somewhat light beer, which is impressive for how strong it is. If I had to ever do it again, I think I'd oak age it a bit longer, and make sure I let it sit a nice long time before I call it ready. I'm really happy with it after the extra aging time.
 
Quadruples are the hardest beer I've ever brewed, and the only beer I've tried to make that turned out undrinkable (twice).

A 1.115 OG with only 70% attenuation would be undrinkably sweet to me. That's an FG of like 1.035. For the style, you'll want an FG between 1.010 – 1.024, but I'd try to get it under 1.020.

Avery's Quad is 10%ABV, but their OG is only 1.093. From Boulevard's site, their OG is 21 and their FG is 2.6 Plato. That's about 1.087 for the OG and 1.010 for the FG. Those are pretty typical of commercial versions. Very high attenuation, which is hard by itself, and also a pretty high OG, which makes the yeast have to work harder.

To replicate those stats at home, that means a long mash, a cold mash (149F), a thin mash (2qt/#), and a very long boil. In my setup, that much mash liquor takes about 4 hours to boil down to my target volume.

You'll also want a big starter. Like 8 liters big. You really can't pitch too much.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

I'd scale the gravity way down from where you are, keep the sugars (corn or table, either works) at around 20% of the grist. Add the sugar when fermentation starts to lag to squeeze the most attenuation you can get out of it.

If you can get the candi syrup, use it. I wouldn't worry about SRM going too high. St. Bernardus 12 is like 37 SRM.

I'm attempting to make an extract version of this and am having trouble comprehending the part I've bolded. I double-checked with their website and your numbers are what they list, but they also say that it is 11.8% ABV. if you plug in the SG numbers they give, it comes out to about 10.5% ABV.

The way I understand this is that they add candi sugars during fermentation, so those aren't included in the OG. Does this sound right to you?

Anyway...I have been basing my Beersmith recipe on this assumption and here is what I have come up with so far. What do you think?

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 2.30 gal
Post Boil Volume: 2.08 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.75 gal
Estimated OG: 1.103 SG
Estimated Color: 36.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 18.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 0.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
8.0 oz Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 1 3.4 %
8.0 oz Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 2 3.4 %
2 lbs 8.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 3 17.1 %
6 lbs Liquid Gold Malt Extract (4.0 SRM) Extract 4 41.0 %
3 lbs 2.4 oz Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 5 21.5 %
1 lbs Candi Sugar, Amber (75.0 SRM) Sugar 6 6.8 %
1 lbs Candi Sugar, Dark (275.0 SRM) Sugar 7 6.8 %
1.50 oz Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 16.7 IBUs
1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 1.4 IBUs
4.00 oz Oak Chips (Secondary 7.0 days) Flavor 10 -
 
I wouldn't get too hung up on the numbers. If anything, I'd shoot a little low, like 10% ABV including all of your sugars should be fine. I don't think aiming for 11.8% ABV is necessary for the beer to turn out well.

Ditch the candy sugar. You really need to be using syrup, like D2. You'd be fine using some amount of corn sugar, table sugar, or turbinado sugar too.

4oz of oak chips is a lot. I'd cut that in half, and at least double the contact time, but I'd go a month or so if you can.
 
I wouldn't get too hung up on the numbers. If anything, I'd shoot a little low, like 10% ABV including all of your sugars should be fine. I don't think aiming for 11.8% ABV is necessary for the beer to turn out well.

Ditch the candy sugar. You really need to be using syrup, like D2. You'd be fine using some amount of corn sugar, table sugar, or turbinado sugar too.

4oz of oak chips is a lot. I'd cut that in half, and at least double the contact time, but I'd go a month or so if you can.

That makes sense. I will probably go with some closer to what you did, especially since this is my first really big beer. I actually planned on using dark candi sugar in the boil and syrup in the fermenter (I just used Amber sugar for the purposes of calculations since it was already in the Beersmith library and had similar properties to the syrup I picked out). Is there a reason that you prefer the syrup over the candi sugar?

Thanks for the advice on the oak chips as well. I hadn't really thought out the details of my secondary with the oak/cherries yet.
 
Is there a reason that you prefer the syrup over the candi sugar?

The best thing to do is to chew on some, and taste the syrup, then decide for yourself.

IMO the rock candy sugar is worse than turbinado, flavor-wise. It's just really bland and boring tasting, but also expensive. You're better off using turbinado if you want some character, or just plain sugar if you don't want any sugar character.
 
Has anyone else done this that can provide some additional feedback on how it came out? I just purchased a barrel and am looking to brew up something to put into it. I am thinking either this or taking a stab at KBS.
 
I got some inside info on the Boulevard BBQ recipe awhile back. I ended up brewing it about 6-7 weeks ago, it has been aging in a used whiskey barrel for the past 2.5 weeks. I will probably let it ride a bit longer in there, then will rack it into a carboy and add some cherries. Based on the initial taste it is going to be really good. My FG was 1.092 and it dried out to 1.011-1.012.

I'll try to post up my recipe when i get back to my PC, which may be a few days.
 
skeezerpleezer said:
I got some inside info on the Boulevard BBQ recipe awhile back. I ended up brewing it about 6-7 weeks ago, it has been aging in a used whiskey barrel for the past 2.5 weeks. I will probably let it ride a bit longer in there, then will rack it into a carboy and add some cherries. Based on the initial taste it is going to be really good. My FG was 1.092 and it dried out to 1.011-1.012.

I'll try to post up my recipe when i get back to my PC, which may be a few days.

I'm curious to see the recipe...and want to know what Cara 300 is that is listed on their website for this beer
 
I'm curious about this inside information too. I have all the ingredients to do a clone of The Reverend, but BBQ would be a nice step up in terms of deliciousness. In my house, you can't have too many gallons of quads on hand, so I'd like to put this on my to-brew list.
 
I will add it to the recipe database when I get back to my beersmith. I can say it is really good after almost 3 weeks in the barrel. I still need to hit it with cherries for a bit and bottle some, so it will probably be a couple months before I can do a head to head.
 
I just made a second attempt at this beer today. Very similar to my initial recipe, but with White Labs 530 Abbey Ale as the yeast, and scrapped the candi sugar as a whole (my efficiency has gotten better).

After brewing today, it went into the fermenter at 1.069. I'll add the candy syrup and brown sugar to the fermenter in a few days.

I plan on putting this into an oak barrel this time, instead of just adding chips to it. I still can't decide if I want to use cherries again, or if I want to change it up and age it on something different. Maybe blueberries?
 

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