Belgium Dubbel recipe, feedback please! :)

[Wobjack]

Hey all,

I've been brewing for about two years now and am just in the process of brewing up my first Belgium Style Dubbel.

I've got a recipe down, I've done quite a bit of research on the style and seen a few variants on the base malts and steeping grains and ended up with the following:

Briess Pilsen Light Malt Extract - 3.9kg

Steeping Grains: Aromatic, Caramunich, Special B (225g of each)

Belgian Dark Candi Sugar Syrup Liquid - 250 ml

Cane sugar - 225g

Hallertauer Hersbrucker 2.2% - 80g (60mins)

Yeast: White Labs WLP 530 Abbey Ale


Any feedback would be very welcome :) I'm thinking I might add some biscuit or chocolate grains to the steeping mix too, or maybe swap out the cane sugar for golden syrup?

Thanks for looking!

 

[strange-steve]

That looks very similar to the dubbel recipe in BCS which means it'll be great. I wouldn't bother with the extra grains, simplicity is often better for belgian styles. I love that yeast strain, I just used it in a quad. My advice is to pitch fairly cool then ramp up the temperature to keep the esters and alcohol flavours under control.

 

[serum]

I'd use more dark candi instead of cane sugar or it might not end up dark enough. That depends on where you got it from and how dark it is. The malt miller one isn't all that dark.

 

[Wobjack]

That looks very similar to the dubbel recipe in BCS which means it'll be great. I wouldn't bother with the extra grains, simplicity is often better for belgian styles. I love that yeast strain, I just used it in a quad. My advice is to pitch fairly cool then ramp up the temperature to keep the esters and alcohol flavours under control.

Yeah I saw that recipe and based it on that, slightly different hops though and judging by a lot of recipes I saw, the small addition of the Munich extract didn't seem all that essential.

Cool, I'll keep a close on the temp. I had read that slowly upping the temperature over the course of a week or so is necessary :) Thanks for your help!

 

[Wobjack]

I'd use more dark candi instead of cane sugar or it might not end up dark enough. That depends on where you got it from and how dark it is. The malt miller one isn't all that dark.

It's the Brewferm Candi Syrup I'm using. A few recipes I read said to add cane sugar as well in order to up the alcohol content and help with a dry finish? :hmm:

I wonder if it makes any difference whether I use white or dark cane sugar?