Another tripel recipe

Hey Guys-

Y'all have been super helpful on past recipes, and so I figured I'd toss up my current ideas for a tripel and see what kind of feedback you have. Have at it!

Efficiency: 80% (on my equipment)

9lbs belgian pilsener
8oz flaked wheat (for head)
6oz belgian aromatic
4oz acid malt (to help with color- I have very hard water)
3lbs table sugar (boil)

2oz tettnang 60 min (adj. to ~35 IBU)
1oz saaz 10 min

90 min mash @ 148F
90 min boil (7gal down to 5.5 gal)

OG: ~1.083
FG: hopefully very low

I wanted to get some vienna into the grist, but I couldn't get the percentages to work out without cutting back more on the pils, which I didn't want to do. Good pils malt IMO should be the star here. I think for this attempt we'll go with simpler-is-better and use the above grist unless someone else here thinks it should be changed.

Also, as I am adding O2 directly to the wort, do you think this beer would benefit from a second addition of O2 around the 12-18hr mark like a really big beer would? I'm sure I'll come up with some more questions, but that's for later in the thread.

Cheers!

looks good. Will you invert the table sugar first? You can just throw it in the boil, but if your wort is not acidic enough, the sucrose might not break down enough into fructose and sucrose. I used Belgian candy for my last tripel to avoid the whole concern.

What yeast strain are you going to use? what fermentation schedule?

DJG42 said:

What yeast strain are you going to use? what fermentation schedule?

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+1 The most important question. Recipe looks great.

I wouldn't add more O2...IME the yeast will be well on it's way after 12-18 hours and you want the yeast character to shine.

I'm thinking WLP500 for this one. It wasn't posted because I'm not dead set on one over another. Personally I'm not a big 530 fan, I like more fruit in my belgians. Fermentation schedule flexible. Long primary, long secondary, and then into bottles for conditioning.

I wasn't planning on inverting the sugar. The yeast can still break it down even if it's not inverted, more easily than malt sugars, and the acid malt should help acidulate the boil anyway.

Just a lunchtime bump- didn't get too much response yesterday. Thanks guys!

DJG42 said:

looks good. Will you invert the table sugar first? You can just throw it in the boil, but if your wort is not acidic enough, the sucrose might not break down enough into fructose and sucrose. I used Belgian candy for my last tripel to avoid the whole concern.

What yeast strain are you going to use? what fermentation schedule?

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Belgian candi sugar is not inverted. Invert sugars are syrups, candi sugar is not. Belgian brewers use table sugar.

I'd leave out the wheat. If you do everything else right it won't be needed. If you screw up the fermentation, wheat won't help. Example: Duvel. Head that most homebrewers would kill for and it's nothing but pils malt and sugar. Same thing for Westmalle tripel.

Thanks Denny- I've never had a real problem with head retention, my fermentations are well under control, but I've never made a beer with a Duvel-like rocky head so that's why I included it (also a little concerned about my very hard water affecting head). I'll drop it. Do you think a little Vienna would make the beer more interesting? Not trying to clone anyone's beer, but neither am I trying to make anything too out-there. Just a tasty tripel I haven't had before.

I love tripels so much that I'm pretty much a purist. Pils malt and sugar are all I use. Strictly speaking, Vienna would be out of place in a tripel, but it's your beer.

Denny said:

I love tripels so much that I'm pretty much a purist. Pils malt and sugar are all I use. Strictly speaking, Vienna would be out of place in a tripel, but it's your beer.

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I am in the same camp. 80 % pils, 20% sugar, BU:GU .37. Make a very good Tripel. Ferment at the right temp and give it some age....... YUM.

beergolf said:

I am in the same camp. 80 % pils, 20% sugar, BU:GU .37. Make a very good Tripel. Ferment at the right temp and give it some age....... YUM.

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With the advice of this forum, that's what I did last Friday. As for fermentation, I made a 1 Liter starter of WLP500 a few days ahead of time. I didn;t see any sign of fermentation for the first 12 hours. Headed off to my sons track meet.

When I returned home I had full krausen in the carboy and then into the blow off tube. I don't have much in the way of temperature control, but my carboy is on a bucker up to the "water line" and the water was around 64 so the wort is a few degrees higher. Wish I had it but as a noob homebrewer that's about the best I could maintain for the first 48 hours. It's up to about 67 in the water, so perhaps 69-70 with the yeastsies at work in the wort.

Will do my best to hold around 74 soon.

Please let me know how yours turns out and I'll share my details. "Liked" your nanobrewery on FB.

+1 to KISS. Pils, sugar, a kiss of hops, yeast. Hell, I don't even add flavor/aroma hops.

If you want to experiment with "difference", to make the beer yours, fiddle with the yeast. You can either manage the ferment temperature differently - maybe try letting the temperature race to something we'd usually consider high, like discussed in Brew Like A Monk - or choose a different yeast than the bog-standard WLP500 or Wyeast Trappist High Gravity. My "house" Belgian yeast is Wyeast Ardennes, and I find that gives me all the difference I require from the benchmark examples of Tripel.

Cheers!

Bob

Cool- this is why I <3 HBT. This is just going to be around the house (not one that we'll serve at the brewery), I may put it into some comps if it turns out excellent, but I really do love a basic tripel- I'll leave out the wheat/vienna. Being in SD, my water is super hard. I guess we'll see how that affects the final product but that's how we'll be running it at the brewery- no water adjustments. Not because I'm lazy (I am, but that's not the reason) but I love the "sense of place" you get from the little things like that.

I know WLP500 is "bog-standard" but I do love that yeast- this is my first big belgian, so we'll see how it handles itself.

Anyway- this should be a separate topic, but my parents' LHBS mislabeled their german Pils as Castle belgian pils. I don't make lagers at home- what ales do you guys like to make with german pils?

Are you imlyng that you can't use German pils malt to make a Belgian beer?

Hardly- I've heard some Belgian breweries even use German pils malt in their beers (no idea if that's true or not, but I'm certain I wouldn't be able to tell the difference in my beer unless they were side by side). I'm just implying that I forgot to grab some other things I needed so I'll be making another trip before brewday. I could potentially grab some Belgian Pils and use the German stuff for something else- a Kolsch or something else fun I haven't thought of yet.

Thanks for the explanation.