Belgian golden strong recipe

[jeff62217]

Looking to do my second Belgian golden strong ale. The first one came out a bit thin and dry 1.060/1.01. I used 2 row instead of Belgian pils, mashed at 147-148 and fermented around 67.

It wasn't strong nor did it taste like a Belgian.

The recipe I plan on doing this weekend is directly from Brewing classic styles, but rather than do a single infusion, I plan on doing a 135 min step mash.
Here's the recipe:

batch size: 5.5 gallon Boil vol: ~7.5 gal
boil time: 90 mins
mash ratio 1.2qt/lb
mash time 135 min

Grains:
Belgian pils: 12 lbs
Cane sugar: 3.5 lbs

hops:
Saaz: .75oz@90 min
styrian golding 1.2oz@90 min
saaz: 1.0oz@15 min

Mash in at 100F, ramp up temp to 170F over 135 minutes.

Pitch wyeast 1388 at 65F, Ferment at 65 and bring up to 72 over the course of one week. Keep at low 70s until fermentation is complete.

I plan on bottle conditioning this batch and letting it sit for at least 2 months before getting into it.

Any pointers or helpful tips would be appreciated. I'm looking for something similar to Duvel, my first was a long way off.

 

[Horseballs]

I would hesitate to do a ramp mash the way Duvel does. They malt in-house to facilitate that mash regime, you may find that with commercially available malt you will have a thin and headless beer. If your heart is set on a step mash, try finding some under modified malt and do a protein rest and a sacch rest or two.

I'd also recommend ramping that ferment from 65 into the eighties over the course of a week. I did that with a pretty much identical recipe as yours and it has a subtle spiciness, lot of pear flavor and finished at 1.002 clocking in at 10.00%. Stopping in the low 70s may not drive the attenuation as much or give it the esters you want.

 

[billl]

The recipe seems fine, but the mash schedule seems pretty unpredictable. I'd keep it simple for your first run at this recipe.

For fermentation, starting in the mid-60's is great. Most of the flavors are going to be produced in the first couple days though, so don't try to reign it in too much. eg don't just raise it 1 degree per day till you hit 72. Let it free rise into the 70's and then hold.

 

[jeff62217]

Thanks for the advice.
Definitely looking for more body, more esters and banana/clove character but balanced with malt flavor.

 

[barrooze]

Without knowing your process, I see a few things that possibly went wrong.

1) You didn't get your OG up high enough, hence you found it wasn't strong enough. What's your mash efficiency? If it's low, you'll want to bump up your grain amounts. If this is the recipe you used last time (at least the grist) it looks like to get a 1.060 OG, you'd have to have 39% efficiency. This is really low... What sort of mash efficiency have you been getting on other all-grain batches you've done?

2) You weren't able to get your FG low enough to make the beer dry. You may not be getting full conversion during your mash or you may be mashing too warm which will leave unfermentable dextrines in the wort. If you add too hot of water and it takes you 5-10 minutes to bring it down to your target mash temp, the damage may be done and the dextrines are in your wort. If you don't have a high-quality thermometer, it may not be calibrated correctly and you may be getting too hot of temps even though your thermometer registers them correctly. To ensure full conversion of your starches, do an iodine test. I use Iodiphor as a sanitizer and I've found that it can be used to perform an iodine test.

3) Another possibility for the high FG, you may not have have pitched enough healthy yeast cells for the OG of the recipe. If your yeast was old, or if you didn't make a starter to get the yeast healty and active again, they may not have been able to fully attenuate your beer. Also, if you weren't able to maintain stable fermentation temperatures, temperature fluctuations can drop yeast out of solution, which will ultimately harm your attenuation. And lastly, the yeast may have gotten too crazy happy with all the sugar and didn't want to eat the maltose after all the sucrose. A solution is to add the cane sugar after about 50-60% attenuation, or when you notice the yeast activity slowing down. This will help keep them interested and keep eating those sugars!

Good luck and I hope this help!

 

[ScottG58]

I have brewed the BGS from BCS. It's a good recipe. You may want to add some dry yeast to bottling bucket. My yeast were pretty crapped out after chewing through all that sugar. Took a long time to bottle carb. Also, I think BCS may suggest carb level that non-Belgian bottles could fail at. I'm at work and am working from memory but would advise double checking. Only real problem with the recipe is it goes away too fast once you get into it.

 

[jeff62217]

Without knowing your process, I see a few things that possibly went wrong.

1) You didn't get your OG up high enough, hence you found it wasn't strong enough. What's your mash efficiency? If it's low, you'll want to bump up your grain amounts. If this is the recipe you used last time (at least the grist) it looks like to get a 1.060 OG, you'd have to have 39% efficiency. This is really low... What sort of mash efficiency have you been getting on other all-grain batches you've done?

2) You weren't able to get your FG low enough to make the beer dry. You may not be getting full conversion during your mash or you may be mashing too warm which will leave unfermentable dextrines in the wort. If you add too hot of water and it takes you 5-10 minutes to bring it down to your target mash temp, the damage may be done and the dextrines are in your wort. If you don't have a high-quality thermometer, it may not be calibrated correctly and you may be getting too hot of temps even though your thermometer registers them correctly. To ensure full conversion of your starches, do an iodine test. I use Iodiphor as a sanitizer and I've found that it can be used to perform an iodine test.

3) Another possibility for the high FG, you may not have have pitched enough healthy yeast cells for the OG of the recipe. If your yeast was old, or if you didn't make a starter to get the yeast healty and active again, they may not have been able to fully attenuate your beer. Also, if you weren't able to maintain stable fermentation temperatures, temperature fluctuations can drop yeast out of solution, which will ultimately harm your attenuation. And lastly, the yeast may have gotten too crazy happy with all the sugar and didn't want to eat the maltose after all the sucrose. A solution is to add the cane sugar after about 50-60% attenuation, or when you notice the yeast activity slowing down. This will help keep them interested and keep eating those sugars!

Good luck and I hope this help!

Sorry I wasn't really clear about that... the first recipe I made was taken from the briess website. I haven't brewed Jamil's recipe yet, but will be brewing it on Sat.

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Recipes/beer/display/belgian-golden-strong

Even though the grist is less, I still was in the 60% range efficiency wise if I am remembering correctly. It was my 3rd or 4th AG batch and I attribute that to not being familiar enough with my setup and the sparging process. I also ended up with 6 gallons, so didn't boil off enough before starting the hop additions...
Have since marked some volume references in my boil kettle to know when I'm getting close to target volume.

I've since gotten my numbers more consistently around 70-75%

 

[jeff62217]

I have brewed the BGS from BCS. It's a good recipe. You may want to add some dry yeast to bottling bucket. My yeast were pretty crapped out after chewing through all that sugar. Took a long time to bottle carb. Also, I think BCS may suggest carb level that non-Belgian bottles could fail at. I'm at work and am working from memory but would advise double checking. Only real problem with the recipe is it goes away too fast once you get into it.

Excellent advice and I was already thinking I'd prime to somewhere around 2.7 volumes... as I'm not looking at buying special bottles/corks/keepers.

I think I read normal caps can handle around 3 volumes.. but not 100% sure.

 

[Jayhem]

My most recent Belgian Golden Strong is the best Belgian I have every made or tried that was homebrewed.

I also do not like my Belgians super dry and alcohol hot in taste.

I went with Belgian Abbey II yeast
87% 2-row
7% flaked barley (for body)
3.5% Abbey Malt
1.5% Aromatic Malt
1.0% Biscuit Malt
Single infusion Mashed at 153F with batch sparge.

Fermented at 68F for 7 days then let it ramp up to 75 for another 2 weeks, bottled and aged for 2 months and it is fabulous! Never had a nearly 10% ABV beer that is so smooth and tasty!

 

[barrooze]

Excellent advice and I was already thinking I'd prime to somewhere around 2.7 volumes... as I'm not looking at buying special bottles/corks/keepers.

I think I read normal caps can handle around 3 volumes.. but not 100% sure.

I've heard that as well.

Sorry I wasn't really clear about that... the first recipe I made was taken from the briess website. I haven't brewed Jamil's recipe yet, but will be brewing it on Sat.

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Recipes/beer/display/belgian-golden-strong

Even though the grist is less, I still was in the 60% range efficiency wise if I am remembering correctly. It was my 3rd or 4th AG batch and I attribute that to not being familiar enough with my setup and the sparging process. I also ended up with 6 gallons, so didn't boil off enough before starting the hop additions...
Have since marked some volume references in my boil kettle to know when I'm getting close to target volume.

I've since gotten my numbers more consistently around 70-75%

Great to hear. The BCS BGS recipe was actually my first all-grain adventure. It's a great recipe. Keep in mind that all the BCS recipes (unless otherwise stated) are set at 70% efficiency and 6 gallons post boil volume so aim for his OG of 1.072 (but it's totally ok to go higher or lower if you want!).

Are you making a starter for this? When I did it, I think I had to do a 1gallon starter (no stirplate at the time). The beer turned out amazing.

 

[jeff62217]

I've heard that as well.



Great to hear. The BCS BGS recipe was actually my first all-grain adventure. It's a great recipe. Keep in mind that all the BCS recipes (unless otherwise stated) are set at 70% efficiency and 6 gallons post boil volume so aim for his OG of 1.072 (but it's totally ok to go higher or lower if you want!).

Are you making a starter for this? When I did it, I think I had to do a 1gallon starter (no stirplate at the time). The beer turned out amazing.

yes I have 1388 slurry from my last batch, was planning on getting a starter going soon.

 

[jeff62217]

Wondering now when to add the 3lbs of cane sugar. From what I'm reading leads me to believe last 15 min or so of the boil, I know there's another school of thought on this: add after 2/3 primary fermentation is complete to discourage the yeast from ignoring the remaining maltose sugars in favor of the simpler sugar.

I'm interested in hearing results, if anyone can chime in.

 

[ksut1547]

Wondering now when to add the 3lbs of cane sugar. From what I'm reading leads me to believe last 15 min or so of the boil, I know there's another school of though on this: add after 2/3 primary fermentation is complete to discourage the yeast from ignoring the remaining maltose sugars in favor of the simpler sugar.



I'm interested in hearing results, if anyone can chime in.

Only my personal experience, but I have never had any attenuation problems adding the sugar near the end of the boil. I think that will be fine.

One thing that has worked for me in my Belgian beers is a 2 step mash. Something along the lines of 145 & 153. It's actually pretty simple to do and always finishes with great head, fairly dry and great attenuation. All of which are desirable in that style.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[jeff62217]

So I brewed this today and was really happy to hit the OG exactly at 1.072 even though my post boil volume was 6 gallons instead of 5.5. I didn't go with the hop schedule in my original post, but chose to go with JZ's suggestion of 2.25oz of saaz at 90 minutes. Letting the wort cool in the fermenter from 78 to 65.. then will pitch my active 1388 starter... and bring to 80F over one week.

I plan on kegging 5 and bottling the rest, so I'll report back once this beer is drinkable..

Drinking a celebratory beer or three for hitting my numbers.