Belgian Dark Strong Ale Westvleteren 12 Clone - Multiple Award Winner

[brew_darrymore]

I've told myself I won't touch my 12 for a year. That changed to 6 months. I'm really thinking of changing that to 3 months

Please don't!!

It only gets better and better the longer you wait. I have a batch that is 14 months old and it's amazing. I have another batch that is 10 months old and it's getting there.

Of course, go ahead, have one in 3 months, for science, you know. Take tasting notes and then have another one in 6 months, and in 9 months. Compare your notes and you'll thank yourself for being patient.

 

[hobbybob]

Nice, let us know what you think of the 8 after some conditioning time.

I've told myself I won't touch my 12 for a year. That changed to 6 months. I'm really thinking of changing that to 3 months

I think 6 months is a nice number to wait, I still have 6 PET bottles for tasting will do 1 every month.

 

[CHansen6]

I just transferred this to a secondary. It'll be going into my keezer as soon as I clear some space. The transfer sample already tastes great.

This beer really dried out though. The hydrometer sample is down to 1.006! This kind of puts a monkey wrench into my idea to add some brettanomyces. I added ECY34 Dirty Dozen to a gallon. I'm calling this portion Dirtiest Dozen. I may add some maltodextrin to give the brett something more to chew on. We'll see. I'm going to reevaluate in a couple of months. The plan is to add some malbec soaked oak cubes around that time, and let it sit until the fall.

 

[jabba11]

Mines been in bottle for going on 6 months now. I have maybe one a month. The first month is was delicious. The second month is was different than the first month and delicious. The third through about mid 4th month it was the same roughly but delicious. Had one about two weeks ago. it had changed again and was fully carbed and less sweet and fruity and it was delicious.

 

[bmaupin]

I just got my hops to brew this, but the AA of the Hallertau Mittelfruh pellets are 2.4%. Should I adjust the amount of hops to match the IBU contribution? The recipe specifies 5.0%. These are added at 30 minutes.

 

[hobbybob]

Adjust the amount to meet the IBU points

 

[maxmog]

Mine was stuck at about 1.022.
i tried a new starter with us05 and champagner yeast..nothing happend
Then i tried Wlp099.
And it is now at 0.996.and maybe not even finished
This is really a monster..
Do you think it will be a good beer?

 

[hobbybob]

Mine was stuck at about 1.022.
i tried a new starter with us05 and champagner yeast..nothing happend
Then i tried Wlp099.
And it is now at 0.996.and maybe not even finished
This is really a monster..
Do you think it will be a good beer?

Off course it will be a good beer, you have made it yourself therefore it's a good beer

It will be dry though but who knows it might be the best beer you have ever tasted

Botteled my westy 8 today @1009 it already tasted perfect

 

[3683Brewing]

My first version finished at 1.012. WLP530 is a fermenting beast when you give it a beer like this to rip through. It won two gold medals at different competitions after 6 months in the bottle. It would have done much better at best of show but carbonation was noted as an issue with my first batch. The second and third time I brewed this recipe, I force carbonated and it was much better. I took 5 gallons of the recipe and added it to a keg with an entire bottle of Malbec and it was incredible. The wine notes played perfectly with the beer. Next time I will add about 1.25 bottles and some oak chips to see how that wine barrel character plays with the beer.

The first batch is almost 1.5 years old and is tasting incredible. Luckily I have about 10 bottles left so those will be spread out over the next year or so while I brew some more batches. Such an amazing recipe! Thanks for posting.

Cheers.

 

[hobbybob]

The first batch is almost 1.5 years old and is tasting incredible. Luckily I have about 10 bottles left so those will be spread out over the next year or so while I brew some more batches. Such an amazing recipe! Thanks for posting.

Cheers.

Hmm I need a lock on my cellardoor:rockin:

 

[CHansen6]

I absolutely love to hear this. I put a gallon of my last batch off to the side and dosed it with brettanomyces, and have some wood cubes soaking in malbec to be added. I didn't use nearly as much wine as you did (~1oz), but we'll see how it works. I can always add more.

My first version finished at 1.012. WLP530 is a fermenting beast when you give it a beer like this to rip through. It won two gold medals at different competitions after 6 months in the bottle. It would have done much better at best of show but carbonation was noted as an issue with my first batch. The second and third time I brewed this recipe, I force carbonated and it was much better. I took 5 gallons of the recipe and added it to a keg with an entire bottle of Malbec and it was incredible. The wine notes played perfectly with the beer. Next time I will add about 1.25 bottles and some oak chips to see how that wine barrel character plays with the beer.

The first batch is almost 1.5 years old and is tasting incredible. Luckily I have about 10 bottles left so those will be spread out over the next year or so while I brew some more batches. Such an amazing recipe! Thanks for posting.

Cheers.

 

[hobbybob]

Well too keep you all updated, I brewed the 12 recipe as a 8 ( OG1068 ) finished @ 1011 now 2 weeks into the bottle

Had a first try today and it's absolutly superb, now I know my 12 will last 12 months before the next taste I have 11 gallons off the 8 to drink first

 

[catdaddy66]

I brewed this about 1.5 years ago and must say it's my best effort so far. It got incredible reaction by all who sampled it! Will be doing another batch soon and will try the simpler recipe as last one was the more complex grain bill.

I used the wlp530 but my partner used a Serbian yeast his wife brought back from Europe. It was a cleaner profile but the abbey ale yeast had a lot more character which I loved. And it clocked in at 11.4%!!

 

[Mocda]

Brewed this last night, started waay too late and did not finish until 3 am...so in half-zombie mode at work today, but i'll get past it hopefully.

Brewed a 42L batch (11.1 gallons), but used too much sparge water and ended up with 46L (12.1 gallons) in fermenters (Not complaining, and extra gallon is always nice). Hit an O.G. of 1.088, which was expected due to too much sparge water. Hopefully 10% ABV if all goes well.

Now...my concern:
I set my fermentation chamber (Fridge with STC-1000 and a heating cable inside) to 24.3C (75.5F) and disconnected the heating. The idea was that i thought i had read somewhere that you should let it free rise to max temp. 24.3C to accomodate the 0.5C i allow it to "swing" away from my set temp, which should effectively limit it to 24.8C (About 80F) max.
Checked in on it 4 hours later and it had gone up 1.5C (About 3F), clear signs of started fermention (krausen).
Now i am sitting at work and fearing the monster in my fridge will climb out of my fermenters before i get home plus get bad tastes due to the fact that i just read that you should ramp up the temp EVENLY over 6-7 days (details...damnnit)

I know i should avoid cooling this thing down again to not have a stuck fermentation, but should i stop it at whatever temp it has when i get home in 5 hours and keep it there for a few days perhaps?
RDWHAHB is a good rule to live by, but right now i would greatly appreciate some advice to calm my nerves or if I should jump in the car and go home to limit the rise?

 

[brew_darrymore]

Brewed this last night, started waay too late and did not finish until 3 am...so in half-zombie mode at work today, but i'll get past it hopefully.

Brewed a 42L batch (11.1 gallons), but used too much sparge water and ended up with 46L (12.1 gallons) in fermenters (Not complaining, and extra gallon is always nice). Hit an O.G. of 1.088, which was expected due to too much sparge water. Hopefully 10% ABV if all goes well.

Now...my concern:
I set my fermentation chamber (Fridge with STC-1000 and a heating cable inside) to 24.3C (75.5F) and disconnected the heating. The idea was that i thought i had read somewhere that you should let it free rise to max temp. 24.3C to accomodate the 0.5C i allow it to "swing" away from my set temp, which should effectively limit it to 24.8C (About 80F) max.
Checked in on it 4 hours later and it had gone up 1.5C (About 3F), clear signs of started fermention (krausen).
Now i am sitting at work and fearing the monster in my fridge will climb out of my fermenters before i get home plus get bad tastes due to the fact that i just read that you should ramp up the temp EVENLY over 6-7 days (details...damnnit)

I know i should avoid cooling this thing down again to not have a stuck fermentation, but should i stop it at whatever temp it has when i get home in 5 hours and keep it there for a few days perhaps?
RDWHAHB is a good rule to live by, but right now i would greatly appreciate some advice to calm my nerves or if I should jump in the car and go home to limit the rise?

I have brewed the recipe three times, and all three times I had a blowoff while actual fermentation temperature, measured by a probe inside the fermenter, was kept at 17C-18C (63F-65F). So, the answer to your first question is yes, you can expect to see the monster crawl out of your fermenter at your temperatures.


My suggestion is let it be. If I were you, I would just leave it at room temperature, which for me at this time of the year is 24C-26C (76F-78F). I don't think it's a good idea to try to cool it down as it may stall your fermentation. With good aging (8-12 months or more), this beer will become amazing. I won't worry about off flavours.

 

[Mocda]

I have brewed the recipe three times, and all three times I had a blowoff while actual fermentation temperature, measured by a probe inside the fermenter, was kept at 17C-18C (63F-65F). So, the answer to your first question is yes, you can expect to see the monster crawl out of your fermenter at your temperatures.


My suggestion is let it be. If I were you, I would just leave it at room temperature, which for me at this time of the year is 24C-26C (76F-78F). I don't think it's a good idea to try to cool it down as it may stall your fermentation. With good aging (8-12 months or more), this beer will become amazing. I won't worry about off flavours.

Thank you so much for your input, it is greatly appreciated.
I could not stand risking the brew going bad due to fast fermenting, so I made a quick trip at home and discovered that the temp had now risen to 19.7C (67.5F), so I made it just in time according to the fermention notes i re-discovered deep in my stack of papers.
It said to keep fermention at or below 20C (69F) for the first two days to avoid the creation of hot alcohols/fusels.
So now i am going to ramp it up towards 25C (77) over the course of the coming week. Might let it free-rise after a couple of days and just make sure to keep it below 26C (79F).

As much as i like your approach on keeping it at room temperature, with a wife and 3 small kids running around the house i feel better keeping it my fermentation chamber

Thank you very much for your input and if anyone else has anything they think i should know about the fermentation of this monster, please do not hesitate to speak up

 

[Mocda]

Just a FYI to those who want to try and brew this:

This was expected, but i was hoping i had left enough headroom in my fermenters to avoid it.
Using 30L (7.9 gallons) fermentors filled to 23L (6.1 Gallons) and these pictures were taken at about 30 hours while the fermentors are still kept at 19.5C (67.1F)

If you want to avoid blowoff or...a mess in your fermentation chamber (Especially since i decided to go with open fermentation), you need ALOT of headspace. I would guesstimate about 12L, or 3 gallons...atleast.

On the plus side, i harvested some krausen which i am going to store to make a starter when time comes to bottle this thing

Inside Chamber
Top
Bottom

 

[brew_darrymore]

Just a FYI to those who want to try and brew this:

This was expected, but i was hoping i had left enough headroom in my fermenters to avoid it.
Using 30L (7.9 gallons) fermentors filled to 23L (6.1 Gallons) and these pictures were taken at about 30 hours while the fermentors are still kept at 19.5C (67.1F)

If you want to avoid blowoff or...a mess in your fermentation chamber (Especially since i decided to go with open fermentation), you need ALOT of headspace. I would guesstimate about 12L, or 3 gallons...atleast.

On the plus side, i harvested some krausen which i am going to store to make a starter when time comes to bottle this thing

Inside Chamber
Top
Bottom

:rockin:

I warned you yesterday, didn't I

 

[hobbybob]

With wpl530 or wyeast3787 you need at least 50% off headspace in the first week, or use blowoff ( with the risk off loossing too mucht yeast for good fermentation )

 

[Mocda]

Hoping i did not mess anything up, but i got the idea that the reason krausen is building up is due to the fact that CO2 is beeing released from the wort into the foam, which traps it into bubbles and causing it to rise.
So i decided to take a big sanitized spoon and sweep it carefully back and forth over the top of krausen and down towards the fermenting wort to release CO2. The spoon never was into the wort itself, only in the krausen on top. Had to do this every two hours to keep it from going over the top again and with this i managed to keep the rest of the yeast inside the buckets, which i presume is a good thing

54 hours into fermentation now and it seems the most intense part of the fermentation is over, since it had not climbed over the edges after i slept for 6 hours and opened the chamber veeery carefully this morning.

And Yes brew darrymore, you told me, and i learned! (Albeit the hard way, lol)

Thank you so much for your input guys

 

[susiQ]

I brewed this only 3 days ago and it is going wild. Even though I had at least 5-7 L of headspace the lid was blown off several times and I have lost some yeast, but hopefully there is still plenty in there (made a 3.5 L starter!) I couldn't help myself and had a taste - already incredible! See the yeast eruption here: https://youtu.be/6dXgJC3_z7s

I have some input on the syrup question. I would love to try CSI's products some day but I always try going for my own solutions if I think they will work. So here goes..

I live in Norway so ended up buying Belgian Candy Syrup from the local brew shop. But I found it lacked the dried fruit/raisin/coffee flavor that I had heard being described here by CSI and others. So I bought a dark syrup from the convenience store that we use for baking here (Dansukker Mørk Sirup, see picture) I tasted it and it had exactly the kind of flavor I was looking for! Super complex flavor: raisins and plums coming through strongly, also this caramel cookie dark coffee flavor. Hard to put in words but I got a strong feeling this will be perfect for the Westvleteren. Also it is much cheaper than belgian candi syrup.

Also a note on the science, Dansukker mørk sirup ("dark syrup") is the byproduct of cane and beet sugar production and consists of glucose and fructose: fermentability should be fine. It has small amounts of sodium chloride so do some calculations based on your local water to make sure it is within the limits of the suggested water profile

Will report back after a year on how this went but I have a very good feeling

Let me know if any of you have tried unorthodox sugar solutions

 

[Mocda]

Hi SusiQ.

Thank you for sharing this information. I also live in Norway and hunted high and low for the original Syrups from Candi Syrup Inc. Did not think to try any of the local options as i wanted to try this recipe and wanted the products it was made from to have as a comparison for later tries.
Might have to put up another batch of this later in the year with the Syrup you used and have a tasting side by side in a year or two? Or perhaps we could swap a bottle between us when the time comes so we could compare on both ends? If you would be interested in that, please send me a PM

If you want to try with the D-180 at a later point, i will give you a link to a post i made in a Norwegian forum with some contact info to a brewshop in Iceland which is where i got the syrups from: Norbrygg-Link (Norwegian site)

Made a batch 9 days ago with 7L headspace and also had blowoff as you can see from the previous couple of posts. Happily fermenting away still. Was down to 1.015 from 1.088 2 days ago, so i am having good hope of hitting my FG on this one, going to check again after work.

Good luck on your fermenting, hoping to hear back from you, either through here or PM

 

[susiQ]

I could not help myself and did a gravity measurement almost every day.. It went from 1.089 to 1.010 in six days, which gives an ABV of approx. 11 %. I am happy I did a big starter with servomyces in both starter and wort, I guess yeast health must have been good.

The taste on day six is a pretty strong alcohol flavor, but no unpleasant flavors. I really love the flavor of this yeast.. Before I have used it in Leffe Blonde clones at 17-19 C, but now at 19-28 C it has a very different and delicious profile.

I guess I have to wait for Christmas to drink this one, which will be hard with my impatience.. Will definitely swap a few bottles with you Mocda

 

[steveabt12]

Hi
I can easily get the d180 etc but I have tried alternatives also. I have found pure caramel nappage to be as good if not better than csi products. There are a lot of different brands, some better than others. So now I use a blend of three brands-much much cheaper than csi. I always check that it is made from pure sugar with no additives(apart from water) You can also calculate the sugar content from the calorie value on the label.

 

[Mocda]

I guess I have to wait for Christmas to drink this one, which will be hard with my impatience.. Will definitely swap a few bottles with you Mocda

I know what you mean, although we are going for the full year of cellar storage (If we can wait). I will send you a PM regarding swapping a few bottles when the time comes

On a sidenote, our fermentation are at 1.015 atm, after 10 days, slowly inching down towards 1.013 where we will put it into secondary, followed by 6 weeks tertiary storage before bottling. It will be interesting to see if it makes it down to 1.012 before it is bottling time.

@steveabt12: How do you work out sugar content from calorie label btw? That is another thing i have never understood to be quite honest.

-Vacation time here btw, so i might be slow responding to messages for a couple of weeks, but i will get around to it when i get back to a computer

 

[steveabt12]

@Mocda
You need to look at Sugars. Pure sugar gives 400 kcal per 100g. The syrups I use vary a bit between brands but the calories derived from just the sugar is about 300kcal per 100g. That makes it 75% sugar w/w.

 

[steveabt12]

@Mocda
Sorry thats the way I calculate it for clear cane syrup which I use for pale beers-because the label doesnt give percentages just calories. Sometimes the labl just says sugar but if you search that brand on internet it will give you the calorie content. For dark syrups it gives the sugar content in % on the label.

 

[decoleur]

Another approach to overcome the active foam during fermentation would be to use a couple of drops of something like fermcap-s. It is liquid that has silicone in suspension and will do some sort of automagic that prevents any foam from building up. I also use it in my boils and can have 7.5 in an 8 gallon pot with no boilovers.

 

[Pole]

Is this recipe truly grain to packaging in 50-60 days? Thinking about giving this a go in a couple of weeks if it'll be ready that quickly.

 

[cyanmonkey]

Is this recipe truly grain to packaging in 50-60 days? Thinking about giving this a go in a couple of weeks if it'll be ready that quickly.

You can package it, but best case scenario is 6 months.