Belgian Dark Strong Ale Help with Belgian Dark Strong Ale Recipe

[jswillbrewforbeer]

Muskegon, (more NW I guess.) I haven't tried it or even heard of it but it sounds really good. I'll definitely seek it out !

 

[Dave Sarber]

Got Belgian bottles, corks, and wire baskets today. Time to start cold crashing beer!

 

[MSAstoria]

So here's my best guess at translating what the server said to match to the style:

1600 lbs. of Canadian Pilsen - probably right (72%)

200 lbs. of Honey - actual honey (9%)

200 lbs. melanoidin - unlikely; maybe carapils (9%)

150 lbs of roasted barley - definitely not roasted; maybe a darker caramel malt like Caramunich or even Special B (7%)

and a bag of “local malt” (wheat or pale) - who knows, try either (3%)

Brewed to an OG of 1.102 that should be about right for a quad. I'd aim for the high side of bitterness for the style (~35 IBUs) because with that much carapils, you'll need it. Personally, I'd drop the carapils and sub in a dark candi sugar, but I like those raisin flavors. If you don't, go with caramunich instead of Special B, but do consider cutting the carapils in half. Or maybe try some Vienna or Munich for depth.

But really, most important is to use a good belgian yeast and control your fermentation temps well. I like WLP530. The White Labs website has some good charts that show what kinds of effects you'll get by fermenting their strains at different temps.

 

[MSAstoria]

This is the chart I had in mind. For that big a beer you'll need a really strong starter, too.

 

[jturman35]

Starter, Starter, Starter, did someone already mention you need a really big starter? This is critical to getting this beer to taste well attenuated, you don’t want it to taste like wort.

I second WLP530. I have used it twice, once in a Leffe Belgian Blonde Ale and once in a Westy 12 clone which is currently sitting at the 5 month mark. My Westy 12 is still young but next time I will cut the D-180 from 2.5lbs down to 1.5lbs.

I like the idea of using Special B and doing different specialty malts.

 

[okiedog]

The raisin character is what he wants to remove.

Aha! I missed that. Also, I always thought that was a characteristic part of the flavor for dark Belgian ales. Carmel/Crystal 120 does not have raison flavors, but I never considered it for Belgians.

 

[okiedog]

I think we may have swung the pendulum too far. We brewed this once and it was lacking in the caramel and toffee flavor we were hoping for, so we bumped from 1 lb. to 3.

We are in this awkward phase of our brewing where we know what we want, we finally have our process dialed in to the point of being able to make good beers, but we still don’t know how to manipulate the ingredients to create the flavors we are after. Also are not sure about what FG to target when creating recipes. I never want to let a $5+ bottle of some of my favorites go flat just to find out what sort of FG we should be targeting, but we may have to do it just to know.

Great Western has a great malt for adding both caramel and toffee flavors to your brew: Crystal 75.