Big, thick Belgian blond

Working on a little comp entry, and time is ticking. I have 4-5 weeks until I need to mail the first two bottles in. I think I have just enough time to pull this off despite the high OG, for reasons I'll explain--but I'll start with my recipe:

Batch size: 5.5 gal
OG: 1.073 (1.056 before sugar)
FG: 1.018
ABV: 7.6%
IBU: 26.4
SRM: 7.1

(at 80% efficiency)
70% Pilsner (7lb)
20% Wheat malt (2lb)
5% Biscuit (8oz)
2% Aromatic (4oz)
2% Honey malt (4oz)

Added during fermentation:
16% Sucrose (2lb)

13.7 IBU Sterling 6%AA (.75oz) 45min
12.7 IBU US Saaz 10% (.5oz) 30min
(yes, I have some wacky high-alpha Saaz but it's pretty tasty)

Single infusion 158F for 60min, decoction to mash out. WLP550 from slurry.

I actually intend to invert the sucrose in a side-by-side boil (then fridge it) so it will be as digestible as possible. Since I'm adding the sugar in once main fermentation has slowed, I know I'll be stretching my primary a few days, but I think I'll also be saving the yeast enough stress to save me from the need for extended conditioning.

Before you say, "Why a 158 mash if you're drying it out with sugar?", I'm looking to make a dry-finishing beer that still has a lot of body, more dextrins, less long-chain sugars. Leffe isn't a bad example, it has a high FG but it isn't really sweet at all. I think this will be a good technique for that but I have sort of cobbled it together and haven't given it the full experimentation it deserves (yet).

I am going to start it mid-60s until it's ready for the sugar and then ramp it up to 70 fairly quickly, then finish it mid-70s, bottle, carb as warm and quickly as seems sensible (upper 70s maybe), and get them straight in the fridge.

If I'm really lucky, I'll have enough of my kegging stuff ready by bottling time to force carb and bottle from the keg. That will probably buy me another week for conditioning.

Think I'm nuts to try? Should I cut gravity down to 1.060ish if I want to pull this off? I think I'd be foolish to enter a comp with anything that's not on the "big" end of the style in some respect or another. I kind of have a hunch the judges won't be absolute style conservatives and something may need to pop to get any attention.

One thing going for me is that the style permits some alcohol warmth and other "young beer" traits that would be flaws in a bigger Belgian. I can always suck it up and brew a Belgian pale instead, but I think they're on the boring side and tend to lack the yeast character Belgian beer lovers want (who would rather have a Palm than a Leffe?).


Update

I made some tweaks in Brewtarget on brew day according to how things really went, and then promptly forgot about them. Here's an updated recipe:

OG: 1.066
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.9%
IBU: 25.8
SRM: 5.7

62% Pilsner
17% Wheat malt
4% Biscuit
2% Aromatic
2% Honey malt

After peak fermentation (48-72 hours):
13% candi sugar/inverted sucrose

15.4 IBU Sterling 30min
10.4 IBU Saaz 30min

156F single infusion mash, 60 minutes (single decoction to mash-out)

WLP550 (12M cells/mL)

Ferment 63F until fermentation slows (4-5 days), then gradually to 70F until attenuated.

I brewed a Belgian Golden Strong with a similar recipe, though I used 8oz Abbey Malt, 4oz Aromatic and 4oz biscuit malts and 1 lbs of flaked barley for body and head retention in a 5.0 gallon batch. No sugar but it still went from 1.084 to 1.012. Nice full body, smooth drinking, nice finish. The best drinking home brewed Belgian I've ever tried.

I love biscuit but I have learned to restrain myself, I used a pound in a belgian pale once and it was... well it was good, but... no.

Yea a little goes a long way with Biscuit or any toasted type malt.

Abbey Malt is really good in this style. It's basically a Belgian honey malt. I never liked super dry, alcohol hot belgians or super bubble gum tasting belgians from high fermentations. I ferment with Belgian Abbey II yeast at 67F for 7 days and then slowly ramp it up to 72F to finish.

I definitely prefer cool Belgians, yes. I even start my saisons at 63. The only "yeast character" beer I like to start over 70 is a hefe, I think (otherwise it seems you totally miss the banana, at least with my WLP380).

I'm a little leery of taking this one warm so soon, but I would like it to have at least two weeks in the bottle before I send it along, so hopefully some heat will keep the yeast on schedule.

On the plus side, even if I bomb the competition with a "green" beer, the entry fee came with a weekend pass to the beer fest--so $40 to enter and get a pass, vs. $65 for the pass is a no-brainer. But I'd rather not send them something they won't drink!

Beer and Bacon? If so, they have some awesome prizes. $40 was a no brainer for me as well.

Also, they have to try it. They are judges.

Yup! And yeah, I don't have my hopes up for the prizes (with 500 entries), but it'll be a good time. I tried to get my wife to brew a beer too and save us another $15, but she wasn't going to hear it. She said it would be like getting me to crochet (though with that at least I can say I tried, kinda).

What are you submitting? I assume you have something contestworthy on hand and aren't sending them some half carbed abomination like (hopefully not) me?

fearwig said:

Yup! And yeah, I don't have my hopes up for the prizes (with 500 entries), but it'll be a good time. I tried to get my wife to brew a beer too and save us another $15, but she wasn't going to hear it. She said it would be like getting me to crochet (though with that at least I can say I tried, kinda).

What are you submitting? I assume you have something contestworthy on hand and aren't sending them some half carbed abomination like (hopefully not) me?

Click to expand...

Why not brew a beer for your wife and get her to help for a few minutes. That is enough to call a beer "brewed by the wife" in my book! Save another $15 and get another 5 gallons of beer in the beer room!

That was my idea! Clearly her scruples are stronger than mine.

fearwig said:

What are you submitting? I assume you have something contestworthy on hand and aren't sending them some half carbed abomination like (hopefully not) me?

Click to expand...

Saison with juniper, seeds of paradise, grapefruit peel, and white tea leaf. Yeah... that one got out of control the day before brewing. Currently it is still in primary till tomorrow. Sitting at 6.6% ABV and it's already fairly complex. Not sure how it will do but, I think I will still enjoy it.

So now I guess we are enemies because we are entering the same category?

Good luck with the brew day!

Oh yeah, it's on now. If a saison takes Belgian I am going to curse their BCJP category combining souls! Saisons are so big now, I was thinking about making another one as a backup to put in, in case this one doesn't taste ready. I've got a session saison I just bottled, but I don't think a 4% dry hopped saison is going to stand out in any kind of competition. Yours sounds good!

This could end up being a great beer but i'd discourage you from thinking you need some kind of pop in your recipe to stand out and win. Many competitions are won by a well-executed, simple beer like a helles.

I know that's the ideal, and exceeding style is no good. But especially with a "modest" belgian like a blond, it seems to me something has to stand out about it. Some judges may reward modesty (with excellent execution), but no one rewards boring. We'll see, though!

I woke my yeast jars up too soon on Saturday and they blew their load on my counter while I was brewing. Offset the loss with some 50ml vials I had set aside for backups. We'll see if it made up the difference! Thankfully smaller Belgians are forgiving of underpitch, within reason. It got chugging pretty quick and had two gallons of kreusen by Sunday night at 62F, so the pitch can't be too far off.

I do agree that judges rate on style rather than how good the beer is but, this competition only has like 10 categories. 1 category is just "lager". Another is "pale". Any pale can enter it. IPA to American Blondes. It will be interesting how they judge this.

Either way, this going to be fun on the bun! Afterward I get to go to a concert of one of my favorite bands. Going to be a great Saturday.

Yeah, I'm kinda weirded by the categories. It's a pretty big competition, they could've split them up by BJCP. I think the informality of that suggests things could go kind of willy-nilly, with some kind of peanut butter, bacon and banana brett RIS taking the show. Specialty sure filled up fast. My first comp though, I don't know squat.

I had a little fun a month ago and went for a Tripel with similar body characteristics.

I mashed at 156, hoping it would give some oomph to the body despite the sugar drying it out...

And then it dried out to a FG of 1.006 from 1.072 - wowzas.

I had an 8 degree temp drop over maybe 5-10 minutes at the end because I was still fooling with my pH meter trying to get a correct reading from the mash on low batteries. I was already 50 minutes in so once I got it back up to temp I said the hell with it and just did the decoction mash out early. Probably not long enough of a drop to matter, but you never know.

Point is, if the FG is too low and the body sucks, I won't fully know why, but the big-body-dry-beer goal is worth another attempt. I am pretty sure this is how it should be done. WLP550 has been a little aggressive for me before, but I suppose it's better than having a sweet Belgian that's not supposed to be sweet.

Actually, what you just said has me thinking I should go ahead and get the sugar addition in there now, or else the yeast will go ham on the long-chain stuff as main fermentation slows.

As you can read in the contest thread the deadline (at least for the Belgians?) for this to ARRIVE in Florida is suddenly this Friday when I was expecting early May. So naturally, I freaked out, because I was already pushing this beer on an unnatural deadline.

But I can't believe it--I force carbed it in a 2-liter last night, and bottled it this morning. I just racked it slowly from the 2-liter, slightly overcarbed to compensate for any loss--enough, hopefully. It's clear (not crystal, but clear), dry, and good. WLP 550 is so kind to me. I always neglected to use yeast nutrient until this beer too, maybe it made a difference. I did not oxygenate, but I really poured the wort it back and forth until it was nothing but froth--maybe that extra aeration helped too.

I bottled a fifth bottle to enjoy later, but the neck broke (@#$#ing New Belgium bottles! Second one that did that!), so I am having a morning beer:





Actual FG is 1.012, which is probably partly due to my unintentional mash temp drop and partly due to all my beers turning out a little drier than calculated for whatever reason. It is a little sweet, but rounded, and the head is puffy and lacy. Retention is very good, thanks to the wheat. Moderate biscuit toast, aromatic and a fairly big honey malt sweetness. Allowing that it's young, this may be the best beer I've made.

So... a good, 8.6% beer in like two weeks. I'm kinda floored. Virtually no alcohol burn (very tiniest trace, which is entirely to style--less than Leffe). No fusels. Moderate, sweet esters. Great beer. When I recreate it, I suppose I'll be putting it in the recipe database.

Edit: Actually probably about 8%, a little of my sugar addition was tied up in trub because of the way I did it, so I left it out. I'll modify the final recipe to reflect that or recreate it this way, not sure which.

Yeah. I love that crazy deadline. Good thing we are given like 2 days to ship it out. Going to ship mine today.

I just took gold in the NYC region for NHC with this recipe:

http://www.thepourreport.com/petite-hoppy-duvel-recipe/

The BJCP National judge scored it a 43. I went much smaller --- in fact considerably smaller than the spec's provided in the BJCP guidelines. This beer has been in two large competitions and consistently placed in both.

Nice! Yeah, wish I hadn't been out of styrians, they go so well in belgians with saaz. The sterling worked out nicely, though.

I might should have chosen between aromatic and honey, too, but the sweetness is hard to gauge right out of primary.

So, how'd you do in the competition? It was definitely the most unorganized event I have ever been to. No one seemed to know a thing. Did you find out how to get your scoresheet? Hopefully, you did better than me.

Didn't place, and no scoresheet yet--hopefully they're sending that out by email? Gonna brew this one again until it's just right, though, I can always drink more of it.

I am definitely going to keep tweaking mine because I think it is great.

I asked like 5 people about the scoresheets. No one seemed to know a thing. One of them told me "mail?". We will probably get a "thanks for coming" email soon with information on obtaining the sheets. The organization was almost laughably bad.

All in all, it wasn't bad. I have been to better and bigger but, it was alright. Not sure how they get away with saying they are the biggest. Haha. O well, that was my last competition until Fall.