American Tripel experiment

I think im going to go loosely by the Belgian Tripel guidelines and toss american ingredients/character into it. Hopefully I will achieve something unique. Here are my thoughts.

Orange American Tripel

Malt Bill:

80% - 2 Row (considering a 50/50 split with marris otter for a little more malt character.. but thats not too american :cross
10% - Crystal 40 (target is to end up with 5 srm.. may need to change this)
10% - something to lighten the body.. flaked wheat perhaps (possibly corn)

Additional Sugars:

Wildflower Honey

Hops:

Cascade - 60/20/10/5 and dryhop additions. (More Hop flavor/bitterness than usual for a regular tripel)

Spices:

Fresh Orange Zest
small ammount of ground coriander
possibly a couple cloves in the secondary (depends on what temp i want to ferment at)
Possibly 1-2 vanilla beans in the secondary

Im targeting an original gravity around 1.080 ish

I am thinking of using SafALE-US 05 for a clean fermentation and let the
spicy flavor come from spices and not the yeast.

Fermetation temp im targeting 65-68, 2 weeks primary, 4 weeks secondary
and bottle condition. Then age for 2-4 months.


anyone have any thoughts on this?

looks like a PA or IPA to me. Maybe you should try an American Wheat yeast...

Looks delicious

Poobah58 said:

looks like a PA or IPA to me. Maybe you should try an American Wheat yeast...

Click to expand...

It is pretty close, but I want a lot of flavor to come from the spices.. im thinking about some black peppercorns too. I think with all the spices that I want to stick in it .. it wont really fit in the IPA / PA catagory

Consider black pepper, cumin, and some star anise. Jack that baby up.

I'd pitch at 65*F and ramp up to 80*F to get some esters from the yeast, too.

Maybe instead of Cascade you could do a US Saaz aroma addition/dry hopping.

there are a number of belgian IPAs out there that are basically this same idea. I had a Houblon Chouffe the other night that was basically a hopped-up (with american hops) tripel. it does use the belgian yeast though.

(personally I think that's pretty much what makes the tripel a tripel, the yeast - so I'd call this a spiced IPA or something like that; but it sounds interesting regardless of what you call it)

I gotta agree with ericm. If you want to call it an American tripel, make it with largely American ingredients but ferment it with a Belgian yeast. That's what makes a tripel a tripel. Otherwise, call it a spiced PA.