I won!

[sockmerchant]

SO I finally made what i consider a great beer. Mates and family have liked the previous 5 batches, but i have higher standards. Also...I mostly drink Belgian beers, which have proven tricky. I started with a Westmalle Tripel clone recipe and tweaked it. It honestly was a troublesome batch. Finished WAY high, took a lot of messing around to get it to finish dry. Then it finished way too dry (1.002). Added some maltodextrin to bring it back up...etc etc etc. Very nearly dumped it on several occasions. It had a sourness to it even after 3 weeks. I suspected it got an infection. Laziness meant it took me another week to get around to dumping it, but fortunately I did one last taste to check... Lo and behold it was pretty tasty!

Guess I learned a valuable lesson there. Currently having an early testing bottle (ok fine its my second "tester"). Not only by far my best brew so far but also one of my favourite beers I have had.

Its dangerous though...tastes like Duvel/Westmalle tripel, easy as hell to drink and freakin 11%. Duvel aint no devil...its a bambi by comparison!

I'm a proud beer daddy

 

[bad67z]

Congrats!! Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Cheers..

 

[jbsg02]

Way to go! I'm still waiting on that moment

 

[djonas]

Lucky you! I've been in the situation where the sourness doesn't go away!

 

[sockmerchant]

Lucky you! I've been in the situation where the sourness doesn't go away!

Bummer.

I believe the sourness was mainly from suspended yeast (used Wyeast 1214). When I tasted it again on dumping day it was tasting good. But as i said I added some maltodextrin back to the secondary the day before i ended up bottling it. I use those plastic barrel fermeters, and was going to bottle straight from that leaving the small amount of yeast at the bottom (this was the secondary) to try and get away with not adding yeast for bottling (its carbed up well....so....it was alright). Anyhoo....the point being when the yeast got resuspended with the maltodextrin addition, the sourness came back.

In the future it will take a lot for me to dump it before its bottle conditioned for some time.

 

[K5MOW]

GREAT!!! Congrats


Roger

 

[Hockeyhunter99]

found the same thing. i have a pale ale that EVERYONE likes. unfortunately EVERYONE drinks it. i find myself having one in the primary every so often and i can't keep it in stock. funny how family shows up about 3 weeks after bottling day

 

[djonas]

Yeah I've got into the habit of shocking my beers at cold temperatures before I keg them up. It really clears them out so that when I give it a sampling, it's all beer!

If your beer goes sour, to a given threshold, all is not lost. Just market it differently! Our strong brown ale that soured became an old ale instead. Ah, I miss that old ale. Two glasses had you feelin' all right.

 

[gio]

What's the recipe you used if you don't mind sharing?

I have my first Belgian (a dubbel) aging in secondary now. One more week until bottling. I can't wait to try it. I'm probably going to make a tripel next but I haven't decided on a recipe.

 

[sockmerchant]

Poo.... my good notes are at home. This is a half batch (10L) that went something like this (in metric units):

3.3 kg German Pilsner
60g aromatic
30g biscuit

mashed at 65C for 90 mins

Did 90 minute boil

15g Syrian Goldings @ 90mins (7%AA)
7g Saaz @ 15mins (4% I think)
7g Saaz @ 5 mins

added 300g table sugar @ 15mins

Pitched Wyeast 1214 at 18C, kept it there for 2 days then raised to 20 for 2 days, then let it go.

I added another 200grams of sugar at day 3 (i think....from memory, but could have been 100g)

It was a freakin battle to get it to attenuate.... but anyhoo...

Might suggest mashing even lower.

 

[sockmerchant]

PS, this is it

Photo came out a bunch darker than it really is. Oh well.

 

[Hockeyhunter99]

very nice. mout is watering and it is only 8 in the morning!!