Belgian Recipe Help

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

I'm kicking aroudn this Belgian Dark Strong Ale recipe It's partial mash

There are one of 2 ways the recipe could go I was curious about methods and suggestion.

Basically what I'm concerned about is handling sugar. My grain bill is 4 pounds of pilsner malt 5 pounds of DME, 2 pounds of sugar and 1 pound of Dark Candy Sugar. Should give me the proper SRM and good ferm levels. What I was wondering though, should I swap out one of the pounds of sugar for a pound of DME.

Also are there any good spicce recommendations? This is gonna be a Christmas beer.

 

[joyceman]

Generally the reccomendations ive seen are to keep table sugar additions to a lb or less, but Belgians are odd. Some people claim that over 1lb of sucrose can lead to a cidery taste, others claim that is BS. Id go with 1lb sugar, 1lb DME & 1lb dark candi. If you have the ability to invert the table sugar and make a clear candi sugar to keep the SRM the same, Id do that.

The obvious spice additions in a dubbel are orange peel. Im not sure how 'Xmasy' spices like nutmeg or cinnamon would play in a dubbel.

 

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

Well this is really more of a strong ale than anything else.