So. It’s been a while since we posted anything. It’s not that we haven’t been brewing, it’s just that we’ve been busy with other issues.

On this occasion, I will be documenting some beers I promised. As a little big of background, part of my daily responsibilities at work involve work in R&D projects. One of these projects is going to end in February 2016. Since most of the partners of the project are aware of my brewing, and many of our social conversations have revolved around this. I promised I’d make some beers for the end of the project. The beers that will be made for this purpose are two: a Belgian Triple, and Stout/Porter. This is the first of such beers.

Unlike most of our beers was made with a friends equipment. Given the strong nature of this beer I borrowed a 50L Brew in a Bag (BIAB) pot that is the property of our brewing friend Topi. The recipe is as follows:

Batch size

1 x 22L

Grain

• 5.50 Kg Pilsner malt (Finnish Viking Malt)
• 1 Kg Wheat malt
• 500 gr Carapils
• 500 gr Oat malts
• 400 gr Piloncillo (Mexican raw cane sugar)

Hops

• 10 gr Rubin (90 mins)
• 14 gr Premiant (60 mins)
• 14 gr Sladek (30 mins)
• 14 gr Sladek (15 mins)
• 28 gr Zatecky (15 mins)

Dry hopping

• Undefined yet, we might dry hop it slightly

Yeast

• wlabs #545 Strong Belgian Ale

Mashing

Single step mash @67ish °C

Boiling

90 min, normal boil.

Unusual/special ingredients 

• 1 teaspoon of dry irish moss as a clarifier
• 1/2 teaspoon WLP yeast nutrient
• 2 x 1.5 lts yeast starter

Fermentation

Estimated 1 month, maybe less maybe longer as this style tends to be fickle. Beer is now at at a steady 20°C.

General expected specs

OG 1.081 – FG 1.016 around 8.6%ABV

34IBUs, 11,7 EBC

Actual measured values

I missed the gravity on this one, the boil-off was not as expected so I got 1.072. BUT I got 25L instead of 22L, so it’s a nice trade-off. Assuming the beer ferments well it should still manage to reach a the same FG and around 7.x% ABV.

You might have noticed two interesting things from the recipe.

1. The hops used are Czech, this is because they were given to me by one of our Czech project partners, thanks Petr, let’s hope the hops fit the style!
2. I used piloncillo, which is a traditional Mexican brown sugar, Belgian beers normally have some sugar in them, I just decided to try out how it would work with Mexican sugar instead of candy sugar.

Lastly, here are some pictures of the process. Starting with the yeast starter.

Here are more pictures about the brewing process itself.

That’s it for now, I’ll post a follow-up when we have something else to show.