Recipe suggestions from these ingredients?

I would like to use up the remainder of my base grains but am unsure what to go for. I'd like an above average strength belgian inspired brew - would just using the base grains of munich and maris otter work ok ? this will be only my third AG (APA and an ESB were the previous two)

I've got

6lbs maris otter
5lbs munich
1lb abbey
1lb aromatic
1lb special b
1lb crystal 80
1lb carapils
8oz british chocolate

sugars can be bought or made

hops:
I've got a few oz's each of hallertau, EKG and columbus

yeast
wlp 530


Cheers for any help

I'd use all the maris otter and munich, all the aromatic, half the crystal and special b. I'm not sure what the abbey is, so I won't comment on that. Use the chocolate only if you want a real dark beer. I probably limit the hops to the Hallertauer. You could maybe use a half ounce of Columbus for bittering, but I probably wouldn't.

The WLP 530 tends to finish fairly dry, so I wouldn't use any sugars at all. Why spend money when you already have the ingredients for a fine ale?

Thanks for the reply - Abbey can be used up to 50% of the grist according to the internet - I didn't really know what I was doing when I ordered the speciality grains, just added a bunch of them to my order

I've got about 5kg of assorted sugars (dextrose, sucrose, light brown, dark brown, muscavado, demerara) for cooking so could add them if needed

I'm in no rush to brew at the moment as I need to make/buy a wort chiller so any more suggestions are welcome

6lbs maris otter
5lbs munich
1lb abbey
.5lb aromatic
1lb special b

That will get you close to an abbey dubbel. Add a pound or so of sugar to dry things up a bit.

Thanks!


I ended up going simple, as to build up the yeast from this brew I did a small 6l batch a while ago, just 50-50 marris otter and munich and one bittering adition to give a 4% beer .I tried it last week as I bottled it and it was so nice that I just decided to add the special B and sugar to this one

so it was

40% MO
40% munich
10% special B
10% sugar

To give an original gravity of 1.058

I was a bit short hitting my OG by about eight points, but I'm hopefull of a decent brew

Should be good, mate. Cheers!

One week in the bottle and I'm lacking yeast flavour, which is what I liked so much about the small starter beer I made - I can certainly taste the plumy special B and some bready flavours but the lovely yeast spiceyness is missing or at least far too far in the background - I assume I over pitched or the huge blowoff I had from it affected it. It's very drinkable and finished dry - quite light bodied, no alcohol flavours at all.

So not bad but could be a lot better - I'll see in a few weeks how it has changed