First Recipe Belgian Strong Ale

[livetaswim06]

Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: Wyeast 1214
Yeast Starter: 1.5L
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: est. 1.092
Final Gravity: 1.018
IBU: 30.0
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 18.3 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):aiming 3 weeks primary at 66-72, slowly raising through fermentation
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): aiming for 2 months bulk aging

10 lbs Pilsner LME
1 lb Extra Light DME
1.25 lbs Belgian Candi Sugar syrup

1 lb Torrified Wheat
.5 lbs Munich Malt
.5 lb Caramunich
.5 Aromatic Malt
.25 lbs Special B

1 oz Hallertauer (60 mins)
1 oz Willamette (60 mins)
.5 oz Fuggles (30 mins)

This is my first recipe ever and I based it on a couple Chimay Blue clones I saw and just want to try my hand at it. I am looking for something similar to Chimay with the dark fruit, and rum-raisin flavors, but with a little more warm bread flavor. Please give me any suggestions you can.

 

[anthropod]

Looks good to me. Temperature control has been the key for my Belgians. Once I dialed that in, it make things great.

I think your hops sound good, but from what I have seen the Willamette and Fuggles are little different than many Blue clones I have seen. I have seen mostly Hallertaure..which you have, and Saaz.

I wouldn't necessarily change my hop schedule. I bet it will be great!

Looks very tasty.

 

[Pie_Man]

The recipe looks pretty solid, here's a couple things that I noted:

1. The Munich and Torrified Wheat require mashing. Very similar in process to steeping, but the starches in the grains need to convert to sugars, or you'll end up with a starchy beer. Starch is polysaccharide (large chain of glucose) which is insoluble and unfermentable by brewer's yeast. Also, the torrified wheat does not have its own enzymes, so it needs to "steal" them from the Munich. I recommend reading up on partial mashing in the all-grain section for more info.

2. Attenuation and FG. Depending on the yeast strain you choose, you're looking at over 80% attenuation to get from your OG to your FG. Some Belgian strains can average higher than 80%, but for other Belgian strains, 80% is the top of the range. The "Chimay" yeast is WLP500 which lists 80% as the upper end of its attenuation.

 

[livetaswim06]

The recipe looks pretty solid, here's a couple things that I noted:

1. The Munich and Torrified Wheat require mashing. Very similar in process to steeping, but the starches in the grains need to convert to sugars, or you'll end up with a starchy beer. Starch is polysaccharide (large chain of glucose) which is insoluble and unfermentable by brewer's yeast. Also, the torrified wheat does not have its own enzymes, so it needs to "steal" them from the Munich. I recommend reading up on partial mashing in the all-grain section for more info.

2. Attenuation and FG. Depending on the yeast strain you choose, you're looking at over 80% attenuation to get from your OG to your FG. Some Belgian strains can average higher than 80%, but for other Belgian strains, 80% is the top of the range. The "Chimay" yeast is WLP500 which lists 80% as the upper end of its attenuation.

So I will be modifying my recipe to have a mini-mash at the beginning. Would it be reasonable to add some biscuit malt, and pilsner malt to mash with while reducing the lme/dme? I read up on biscuit malt and it adds that breadiness I want in my brew.

Is there a good calculator handy for how much pilsner malt I need to use in a mini-mash so that there is enough sugar to mash the biscuit, munich and torrified wheat?

Last question might be a n00b one, but when doing a mini-mash are all the grains including specialty added to the mash, or do I do the mini-mash and then steep specialty grains at a lower temp after mini-mash complete?

Obviously I need to read up more on partial-mashing techniques.

 

[anthropod]

You would add all the grains to the mini-mash, or at least that is how I do it. What your looking at is needing a malt modified enough to have enough enzymes to convert the terrified wheat. Pie_Man is right, the Munich should have enough to convert the terrified wheat.

You could add some biscuit and pilsner malt to your mini-mash. It really depends on how much of a mini-mash you can handle. I normally do all grain. Truth be told I have only done two mini mashes. They worked well because I have a smaller 5 gallon pot and my oven is big enough to hold it, so I did brew in a bag and was able to hold the temp in my oven for my mini-mash. It worked great.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/index.html

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Partial_mash

 

[Pie_Man]

So I will be modifying my recipe to have a mini-mash at the beginning. Would it be reasonable to add some biscuit malt, and pilsner malt to mash with while reducing the lme/dme? I read up on biscuit malt and it adds that breadiness I want in my brew.

Is there a good calculator handy for how much pilsner malt I need to use in a mini-mash so that there is enough sugar to mash the biscuit, munich and torrified wheat?

Last question might be a n00b one, but when doing a mini-mash are all the grains including specialty added to the mash, or do I do the mini-mash and then steep specialty grains at a lower temp after mini-mash complete?

Obviously I need to read up more on partial-mashing techniques.

Yes, I would add some pilsner malt and reduce the amount of extract to compensate. How much depends on your mash efficiency, meaning the amount of potential sugar you extract from the malted grain. For your first mash, I'd estimate an efficiency of 65-70%.

Keep a little extra extract on hand in case your efficiency is lower. After the mash, pull a gravity sample, cool the sample, and take a gravity reading (you can then return the sample to the boil). If you know your liquid volume fairly accurately, you can compute the total gravity points, then calculate the amount of extract required to reach your desired OG. This may help: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-3.html (probably a good idea to read all of chapter 12).

I use Beersmith which does math like this for me. Although the math is not difficult, it's a little tedious. You can also download a free trial version of Beersmith. I know some guys in my home brew club use brewersfriend.com, which I believe is free, but I don't have experience with that. Or, you can calculate the gravity and DME/LME manually using the points per gallon method that Palmer outlines. The manual approach will force you to learn and understand the calculations used in the software programs.

Also, yes, to adding the specialty grains to the mash.

 

[Oceantendency]

I would wash your yeast from the primary when you transfer into your secondary and then do a starter with a small amount and repitch at bottling since that yeast will be extremely stressed out after a total of 3 months in that high of an environment. Just decant as much of the liquid as possible before pitching at bottling. I believe Chimay Special Reserve now uses Nugget or Magnum, but fuggles is a good choice. I've had great luck with Mt Hood, which is similar to Fuggles. Also maybe increase your Special B just a bit to give you more of that biscuity and raisin flavor since you already have the aromatic malt in there too, and also recommend a 90 min Boil, not a 60 min to help with carmelization flavors. Which color Candi Sugar are you using, hopefully amber to Dark. Or you can also use a Candi Syrup (D90 for example or SRM 80 Syrup) which will contribute those rum-raisin like tastes even further.

 

[Pie_Man]

Is there a good calculator handy for how much pilsner malt I need to use in a mini-mash so that there is enough sugar to mash the biscuit, munich and torrified wheat?

I think I over looked this in my previous post. Grains have what is known as a diastatic power. This is basically the enzyme capacity of the grain. The enzymes convert the starches to sugars and the enzymes are activated at speciic temperature ranges. The Pilsner, Munich have their own enzymes. I believe the Biscuit malt has enzymes, but at a low amount (low in diastatic power). The torrified wheat does not have enzymes (0 diastatic power). This article will help explain it: http://beersmith.com/blog/2010/01/04/diastatic-power-and-mashing-your-beer/

I didn't do the math, but adding 1-2 pounds of Pilsner should give you plenty of diastatic power.

 

[motorneuron]

Important point of clarification--is your candy syrup dark, or clear? If it's clear, you need to get dark. The rummy, dark fruit flavors in something like Chimay Blue come from dark sugar much more than from dark grain.

As for the hops, Willamette and Fuggles are very similar, and in turn are similar to Styrian Goldings, which are common in Belgian beers. So I think you're okay on that. I probably wouldn't bother with the Hallertauer at 60; that's mostly an aroma hop, with low AA%, and you're kind of wasting it by using it so early. Using a small amount of something clean (e.g. Magnum) would be preferable. Or just put in a little more Willamette/Fuggle.

On mashing specialty grains: crystal grains (Special B, caramunich) don't NEED to be mashed, because their starches are already converted to sugars. Thus, steeping is sufficient, since the sugars will just dissolve into water. But there is no harm in including them in the mash--the sugars will dissolve either way. The only grain that you generally might consider not mashing along with everything else is a very dark grain (e.g. black patent), which is not applicable here.

 

[livetaswim06]

Important point of clarification--is your candy syrup dark, or clear? If it's clear, you need to get dark. The rummy, dark fruit flavors in something like Chimay Blue come from dark sugar much more than from dark grain.

As for the hops, Willamette and Fuggles are very similar, and in turn are similar to Styrian Goldings, which are common in Belgian beers. So I think you're okay on that. I probably wouldn't bother with the Hallertauer at 60; that's mostly an aroma hop, with low AA%, and you're kind of wasting it by using it so early. Using a small amount of something clean (e.g. Magnum) would be preferable. Or just put in a little more Willamette/Fuggle.

On mashing specialty grains: crystal grains (Special B, caramunich) don't NEED to be mashed, because their starches are already converted to sugars. Thus, steeping is sufficient, since the sugars will just dissolve into water. But there is no harm in including them in the mash--the sugars will dissolve either way. The only grain that you generally might consider not mashing along with everything else is a very dark grain (e.g. black patent), which is not applicable here.

I was planning on using D45 Candi syrup, I tried putting D90 into Beersmith but I was getting a much darker brew. I think I am going to play around with the recipe some more tonight and try to put in an updated one.

Thanks everyone for the help so far!

 

[motorneuron]

I think D90 is a better target for this beer, although D45 would be okay. An SRM of 18 is pretty light for a dubbelish beer like this, so there's no problem going darker IMO. Besides, taste is more important than color! But it's your call.

 

[livetaswim06]

Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: Wyeast 1214
Yeast Starter: 1.5L
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: est. 1.094
Final Gravity: 1.019
IBU: 25.7
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Color: 21.6 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):aiming 3 weeks primary at 66-72, slowly raising through fermentation
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): aiming for 2 months bulk aging

6.6 lbs Pilsner LME
4 lbs Belgian Pilsner Malt
1.25 lbs Belgian Candi syrup D90 (15 mins)

1 lb Biscuit Malt
.5 lb Torrified Wheat
.5 lbs Munich Malt
.5 lb Caramunich
.5 Aromatic Malt
.25 lbs Special B

1 oz Cluster (60 mins)
1 oz Hallertauer (30 mins)
.5 oz Saaz (5 mins)

I have modified this quite a bit based on feedback.

Per Beersmith the mash should be 2.25 gallons at 165 for 75 mins with a mash temp of 150 and then sparging with ~4 gallons at 168.

I tried to add the Candi syrup later in the boil, but Beersmith is being odd. I would think that adding a sugar later in the cycle would reduce hop utilization, but adding in the last 15 mins raises IBU and adding syrup at flame-out raises IBU even higher.

I am very new to Beersmith and it would be awesome if someone could verify my mash steps and that everything is being calculated correctly.

 

[Pie_Man]

It seems Beersmith has you mashing at a water to grist ratio of 1.25 quarts per pound which is standard. My concern is the 165 strike water, I think that's too high for only 7 pounds of grain. If you are shooting for a 150 infusion temp, which I think is good, I would probably heat your strike water to about 158 (I'm just estimating based on experience). If your mini mash setup has direct fire heat, which I assume it does since you probably don't have a mash tun yet, you can always increase the heat until you reach 150.

In Beersmith, you may want to try checking the "Adjust temp for Equip" box. Also, click on the little checkmark box next to the mash profile and adjust the grain temperature (probably about 72 degrees, or whatever room temperature is in your house), and the tun temperature (probably about the same as the strike water temperature).

Whatever you end up doing, don't panic. You can stir and add a few ice cubes if the temperature is too hot. And you can add heat if the temperature is too cold. If you are not using direct fire heat, just boil an extra bit of water off to the side and add that if needed.

 

[Oceantendency]

I was planning on using D45 Candi syrup, I tried putting D90 into Beersmith but I was getting a much darker brew. I think I am going to play around with the recipe some more tonight and try to put in an updated one.

Thanks everyone for the help so far!

At first D90 is dark, like a patent leather black, however after 4 months or so the body will lighten in color to a beautiful amber-copper color. Plus the rum-raisin flavors will shine through after about 3-5months. I've used D90 in about 3 different brews, I've started to see changes in body color in about 2.5 months, then really lightened up at 4 months.

Check out this guy CSI who makes syrups, actually the D44, D90, and D120 syrups and also has comparisons on how they ferment or age out:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chimay-grande-reserve-blue-369109/

 

[Oceantendency]

Whatever you end up doing, don't panic. You can stir and add a few ice cubes if the temperature is too hot. And you can add heat if the temperature is too cold. If you are not using direct fire heat, just boil an extra bit of water off to the side and add that if needed.

Def don't panic, have a beer, stay calm, but Focus . I always keep some filtered water in the Frdige or Freezer, put don't let it freeze completely, as well as some water in a small pot on the stove for emergency adjustments. Ice can have contaminates in it that could also attriubute to off flavors and depending on what those contaminants contain, they may not boil out before doing harm to the brew. Also the ice melts slowly not immediately so temp change while mashing or steeping won't be as fast in those precious first 5-10 minutes to hit right on as with just cold 38-40* water. I've had great luck between 150-152* steep or mash temp when I do my Abbey Dubbels and Trappists. Just my 2 cents.

 

[livetaswim06]

Not sure if anyone is still following this, but I bottled today, OG was 1.088 and FG 1.019/.018 (hard to read due to foam). Taste was remarkably similar to Chimay Blue even flat and rather warm (~68 F). There was a slight bitterness but I am expecting that to fade with carbonation and chilling the brew. Will post another update in 6+ months with tasting notes.

The recipe changed yet again after consulting another much more experienced brewer.

4 lbs Pilsner
1 lbs Caramunich
.5 lbs Munich
.5 lbs Torrified Wheat
.25 lbs Special B

Mashed in at 165, mash temp dropped to 151 F and was held for some amount of time. I put this in the oven and it was set to warm. The thermometer in the mash pot read 150, but after an hour in the oven and a quick stir this shot up to 168. Consulting with a buddy, most conversion took place in first 15 mins and I expect the temp crept up only in the last half hour which would possibly explain the slight bitter note detected during bottling.

Also:
Pilsner LME 6.6 lbs at 60 min
Brewers Gold 8% at 60 min
Hallertauer 4.8% at 30 min
D90 Candi Syrup at 15 min
Irish Moss capful at 15 mins
WLP500 yeast

Estimated OG was 1.087 and I read 1.087 so hit that on the nose so hopefully everything converted correctly. Added 1.5L of starter which was on a stir plate for 48 hours or so, left alone for a day at 68 F and then chilled for 1 day in refrigerator.

Primary was 14 days at 68 F, no blow off but liquid was moving in the fermenter like it was a rolling boil. Then ~ 2.5 months secondary at 68 F. This was a banana factory for about 3 weeks, then for 4 weeks i could smell bananas if I put my nose near the airlock and then when bottling banana notes were there, but just barely and aroma was very balanced. I suppose same thing would happen if simply skipping long secondary and straight to bottle conditioning. I expect after 6+ months aging for the aroma to only improve and flavors to balance further.

 

[livetaswim06]

Just want to add some tasting notes 10 days after bottling. I put a 12 oz bottle in the fridge for 48 hours before tasting.

A: Poured a muddy brown, but this is surprising given that it was relatively clear in the bottling stage. I suspect that yeast got stirred up and is still active. Also due to this strain being a low flocculator I would want to cold age at least 10 days for a real test. Had some yeast on the bottom of bottle, but not compacted. There was no head on this as it is not carbed up yet.

S: Malty, raisins, plums, very faint hop aroma, some chocolate, slight cherry, and slight banana. I don't want to pat myself on the back, but this smells exactly like Chimay Blue.

T: Tastes almost like rum soaked raisins in beer, which is what I would describe Chimay as. There is definitely a bready note which I wanted to emphasize more than the actual version, but came up tasting just like the real thing. The only thing lacking is the alcohol is noticeable, but very slight on the finish. Aftertaste also has a bit of alcohol taste, but I fully expect that to fade with some aging and also not surprising for a 9.06% beer.

M: A bit sweeter than the original, but I expect this is due to my failure in the mash stage. The sweetness is quite light and enjoyable though. No real carbonation to speak of at this point.

O: This tastes like a flat Chimay that is slightly sweeter. I could not be happier with the results and look forward to trying this in a month or two.

 

[livetaswim06]

I entered this into competition, came back with a 35. Judges notes were that that I needed to control temp better, can't believe they could taste it. Also mentioned malt may have been a bit stale. If anyone wants to try this one, please let me know how it turns out!

 

[motorneuron]

Hot fermentation is detectable, especially in a higher-gravity beer, by the presence of phenols (higher alcohols; they can give a kind of harsh alcoholic burn and can also taste like an electrical fire) and/or by the presence of a ton of esters (fruity "yeasty" flavor, which Belgian yeasts, especially Chimay, produce a lot of). So it's not totally surprising that they could pick that up at the edges. It's a common problem for stronger Belgians. But a 35 is a very good score, especially for a first shot at this kind of beer, so congratulations. If you do it again, try to pitch cool and let the temperature rise only after a few days.