Belgian tripel w/o sugar addition?

So I spent a good amount of time looking for a Tripel Karmaliet clone recipe that wasn't all grain (i'm not setup for it yet... going to do this as my first partial mash), and I finally tracked one down. recipe is as follows:

Batch size: 5 gallons
Boil size: 3 gallons for 60 min.
OG: 1.083 (1.074-1.087)
FG: 1.020 (1.017-1.021)
efficiency: 75%
ABV: 8.4%
IBU: 11.4

Malt:
3lb 8oz Extra Light DME
3lb 8oz Wheat DME
2lb 12oz Belgian Pils
0lb 12oz Flaked Oats
0lb 8oz Belgian aromatic

Hops:
0.75oz Sterling (60 min.)
0.5oz Styrian Goldings (15 min.)
0.5oz Styrian Goldings (5 min)

Yeast:
WLP570


That's all thats listed for the recipe... I'm piecing together the mash time/temps from the all grain recipes I've found, and I'll also be adding coriander seed (0.5oz at flameout) and orange zest (1.5oz at 10 mins) as every other recipe I've seen for a clone mentions it but this one.

But every other recipe also mentions a sugar addition of some kind as well, usually candi. And this one mentions nothing about it. I know it is usually hand-in-hand with the style to thin the body... but the ABV is right about where I want it.

So does this recipe look kosher?
Are they using the DME's in place of it? (it being sugar)

Any suggestions for improving the recipe?

I made a Carmelite Tripel partial mash from Northern Brewer last fall (clone recipe, but I've never had the original). You can find the recipe posted in the link below, click for more information:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/...h-kits/carmelite-triple-grain-tripel-kit.html

It was straight barley LME, but had flaked and/or malted versions of belgian pilsner malt, oats, and wheat in the mash. They also give you 1 oz of corriander, but I used only a little bit of it. Can't really tell you how it turned out since its bottle aging right now. I had 1 back in February, but it had still not quite turned the corner yet. I'm sure it'll be great by June or so.

According to my notes it was 1.078 OG & 1.007 FG. ~ ABV of 9.3% before bottle priming. The kit included 2 lbs of corn sugar. I added 1 and subbed 1 lb of invert sugar for the other.

I wouldn't do it without adding some sugar, the FG won't go low enough. You may get 1.020 like the recipe says but that's pretty high for a tripel. Not saying it won't be good, who knows, but you'd be hard pressed to find a good tripel that didn't use some simple sugar as part of the bill. If you don't want the ABV any higher, I'd cut out some of the wheat DME and replace with simple sugar. Shouldn't matter too much what kind, candi, table, dextrose, they all ferment completely.

A good tripel dries out more than that. I would suggest dropping some of the extract and replacing it with sugar.

beergolf said:

A good tripel dries out more than that. I would suggest dropping some of the extract and replacing it with sugar.

Click to expand...

Me too! I'd cut the wheat extract down (well, I wouldn't use wheat extract at all, actually, just light or extralight DME) and replace a pound of it with corn sugar.

thanks for the tips... something just didn't seem right about not adding sugar of some kind to it, but i'm still pretty green so i wasn't sure.
I'm going to rework the recipe, and I'll post back up.