Kasteel Donker Beer Kit Recipe

[CiderTropica]

Kasteel Donker is my favourite beer. It is a rich, dark and sweet Belgian quad at 11% ABV with tasting notes of liquorice, banana and raisins. It is expensive to buy in the UK at £4.20 per 330ml bottle, so I wanted to create my own cheaper homebrew alternative.

The only recipes I could find online were for a fully brewed version from scratch, and I don't have all that gear, so I wanted to create a version using a kit. My results were great, and here's what I used:

• Brewferm Belgian Dubbel 16-pint beer kit
• ~7 litres Tesco Ashbeck mineral water
• Muntons Dark Spraymalt 500g
• Brewferm Crushed Brown Belgian Candy Sugar 500g
• Mangrove Jack's 10g Beer Yeast - M41 Belgian Ale

I boiled around two litres of mineral water to dissolve the liquid from the kit in the FV, and gave it a good stir.
Then I boiled another two litres of mineral water and dissolved all the candy sugar and spraymalt in a 5-litre jug. It took a LOT of stirring to dissolve all the candy sugar. Then I poured the contents of the jug into the FV and gave the entire mix another good stir.

When the mix was cool enough, I took an initial gravity reading and it was very high. I then topped up the FV incrementally with more cool mineral water and took further readings until I reached the target OG of 1.090, which would yield 10.5% ABV if the brew went down fully to 1.010. The total volume at this point was 8 litres.

The mix was still very hot due to the ratio of boiling water to cool water, so I had to let it stand for a few hours to get it down to pitching temperature. Somebody else needed the kitchen, however, so I ended up pitching the yeast at 32°C. This is quite high, but pitching the yeast at this temperature got the fermentation going rapidly. A few hours later, it had the biggest krausen I've ever seen:

I used Mangrove Jack's M41 Belgian Ale yeast as it has the high alcohol tolerance needed to get the 11% ABV I desired. The yeast that came in the kit would not have tolerated this.

I used a heat pad to keep the temperature around 24°C for the duration of fermentation. I kept the temperature this high intentionally in order to create the fruit esters present in Kasteel Donker.

Three days later, the SG was 1.040. The beer poured into the testing tube with a creamy off-white head, and already looked and tasted very much like the finished product.

Twelve days after starting fermentation, the SG was 1.012. Readings taken over the preceding days indicated that this was now the final gravity. According to the ABV calculator, the beer was now 10.24% ABV. It looked and tasted amazing.

I bottled the beer with 5g (one heaped teaspoon) of white table sugar per 330ml to further drive up the ABV to near the target of 11%.
I put all the bottles into a big box on two heat pads keeping the temperature between 18 and 24°C. After three days, I opened a bottle to check the carbonation and found that it poured with a thick, creamy off-white head which lasted all the way down to the bottom of the glass – a success.

The Belgian Dubbel beer kit instructions recommended I age the beer in a cool place for 6–8 weeks. It has been ageing in my garage for 5 weeks at time of writing.
The beer looks and tastes almost identical to Kasteel Donker. The raisin and liquorice flavours have come out nicely. However, instead of banana, the fruit esters taste more like plum. Since I like the taste of plum, this is not an issue for me.

Is the beer I have made identical to Kasteel Donker? No. However, it is damn close, and looks and tastes amazing. At 11% ABV, it does not take much to do the job.
The cost per bottle of my homebrew works out at around £1.20 per 330ml bottle – significantly cheaper than £4.20 for a real Kasteel Donker in the shops.
I am very happy with the results.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Awesome! a similar thing happened with Aventinus. I love it but it was hard to find and not cheap when I did. So after 3 attempts I made a beer I liked more than the original. My trick was to use a weiss yeast and then wilko gervin to get the last few abv% points.It cost me £1.58 for a 500ml bottle.

 

[old dog new tricks]

Sounds amazing not been brave enough yet to try anything other than cider or my attempt at wine.

Not a big beer drinker in a pub id go for cider for example, but this sounds very interesting.

Silly question but i thought you needed a lot more equipment to make beer can you use a beer kit with the same stuff i have for cider - 23 ltr plastic FV, 25 ltr plastic FV, 2 x 5 ltr plastic FV. 4.5 ltr glass DJ. Hydrometer, thermometer and auto siphon. 500ml PET bottles

i did read some good things about MYO Irish Stout kit being decent and I do like an odd pint of the black stuff just not sure could drink a full 23 ltr haha

 

[CiderTropica]

Hello

Silly question but i thought you needed a lot more equipment to make beer can you use a beer kit with the same stuff i have for cider - 23 ltr plastic FV, 25 ltr plastic FV, 2 x 5 ltr plastic FV. 4.5 ltr glass DJ. Hydrometer, thermometer and auto siphon. 500ml PET bottles

Here is a list of equipment I use for all my beers:

• 23l plastic FV
• Stirring spoon
• 5l plastic jug
• 2 x homebrew heat pads
• Yeast nutrient
• Hydrometer and 100ml sample tube
• 2 x thermometer strips (one attached to side of FV; one goes in the cardboard box when bottle-conditioning for carbonation)
• Chemsan non-rinse steriliser
• Plastic funnel for adding one teaspoon of priming sugar to each bottle

The 5-litre plastic jug is the workhorse of my homebrewing process. 10ml Chemsan in 5 litres of water is the correct dilution level. I then put the spoon, hydrometer, sample tube, scissors for opening the sachets etc. into the jug of solution for a few minutes. I then take all the stuff out and leave it on fresh kitchen roll before use.

After scrubbing the FV with light bleach spray, and rinsing thoroughly with cold water, I pour the 5l Chemsan solution into the FV, seal the lid, and shake and turn the FV so the Chemsan touches all surfaces. I run the solution out through the FV tap to disinfect the tap. I also ensure the tap is still tightly screwed into the bucket from the inside. Despite the foam, one does not need to rinse the FV after this step (the foam is harmless).

I use a Young's plastic FV (the cheapest available at the time) and the lid is not airtight (even applying Vaseline does not seal it). I therefore do not use an airlock at all, since CO2 will escape anyway. I put a couple of pieces of Sellotape over the airlock hole in the lid to keep bugs out, and change this Sellotape after every brew.

The Young's plastic FV also has a non-standard tap, meaning the bottling wand I bought does not fit it. I therefore had to purchase a length of food-grade PVC tubing at the correct diameter to insert into the tap nozzle. I cut the tubing long enough that it goes all the way to the bottom of the each bottle when bottling, thus fulfilling the same purpose as a bottling wand.

I bottle straight from the primary FV. I do not care about sediment since sitting the beer in the garage will eventually cause that to settle out. Careful pouring minimises transfer of sediment to the pint glass. Some of my ales actually benefit from a little yeast in the glass (it depends on style).

I only use glass bottles, because I have some concerns regarding PET being left in contact with alcohol for a long time and potentially altering the taste of the brew. However, I do not know if those concerns are founded.

Once bottled with a teaspoon of priming sugar per bottle, I put all the bottles into a cardboard box and sit the box on two heat pads set near maximum. The thermometer strip inside the box helps me keep the temperature around 22°C. Carbonation usually takes around 3 days. The beer is transferred to the garage where it sits until I drink it. The beer is usually good after a week in the garage, but gets a lot better over time. The Belgian kit I made in this post is now at its best three months on.

i did read some good things about MYO Irish Stout kit being decent and I do like an odd pint of the black stuff just not sure could drink a full 23 ltr haha

I took a look at that kit and it's one of these where you need to add a ton of sugar to make 23l. Don't do that.
Brew it short instead to 10l like I did in this post and you will have a nice stout.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...orter-brewed-short-for-a-grade-a-beer.104440/

 

[old dog new tricks]

Cheers for the message and advice I had been looking at the extract brewing but your read out on the kits looks very good and the smaller capacity is what I am after as well.

So get a an Irish Stout kit and make it short and use Dried Malt Extract to meet the SG level?

My son like Corona would a similar approach works for the Muntons Premium Cerveza kit?

presume for Stout use a dark or extra dark DME and for the Cerveza use light DME?

 

[CiderTropica]

So get a an Irish Stout kit and make it short and use Dried Malt Extract to meet the SG level?

Choose your desired SG beforehand. Gradually add water, stir well, and take readings until you hit your SG target.

An example is 1.050 SG for a final ABV of 5.25%. Add half a percent for carbonation fermentation (just an estimate), and you will end with an ABV of around 5.75% in the bottle.

It may be the case with your kit that making it up to around 10 litres will give 1.050.
You don't need to add DME unless you want to add more water OR make the kit higher ABV.

My son like Corona would a similar approach works for the Muntons Premium Cerveza kit?

Yes, do the exact same process. That kit is a single-tin kit, and single-tin kits usually reach 1.050 SG when made up to around 10 litres.
The only difference with lagers / pale beers is that I would use Tesco Ashbeck mineral water as it is very soft water. My tap water is very hard, which is good for stouts / darker beers.

presume for Stout use a dark or extra dark DME and for the Cerveza use light DME?

If you are only using a small amount of DME to bring up the SG, it doesn't really matter which one you use.
In my porter, I used light DME and it was lovely. But I only used around 300g of DME.

I bought a few packets of light DME and just use that to bring up the SG regardless of beer type. It works well.

 

[old dog new tricks]

Choose your desired SG beforehand. Gradually add water, stir well, and take readings until you hit your SG target.

An example is 1.050 SG for a final ABV of 5.25%. Add half a percent for carbonation fermentation (just an estimate), and you will end with an ABV of around 5.75% in the bottle.

It may be the case with your kit that making it up to around 10 litres will give 1.050.
You don't need to add DME unless you want to add more water OR make the kit higher ABV.



Yes, do the exact same process. That kit is a single-tin kit, and single-tin kits usually reach 1.050 SG when made up to around 10 litres.
The only difference with lagers / pale beers is that I would use Tesco Ashbeck mineral water as it is very soft water. My tap water is very hard, which is good for stouts / darker beers.



If you are only using a small amount of DME to bring up the SG, it doesn't really matter which one you use.
In my porter, I used light DME and it was lovely. But I only used around 300g of DME.

I bought a few packets of light DME and just use that to bring up the SG regardless of beer type. It works well.

Thanks for all the advice I am in the west of Scotland the water here is soft so should be ok with that I think.

Will have a play about once I get paid