Suggestions for a Belgian Strong Dark

[Donjon]

Hello there,

I'm new to brewing, I've done 7 mashes in the last month or so, variations on APA recipes and porter recipes. Next up I'm very keen to do a Belgian Strong dark and I'd like someone to point me in the direction of a decent road-tested recipe.

I'm not at the stage where building my own recipe is an option and choosing a random recipe online has loads of pitfalls, although this one seemed to be quite appealing.

For a 5 gallon batch

• 8 pounds Belgian Pilsner malt
• 4 pounds Belgian Pale malt
• 2 pounds Maris Otter malt
• 1 pound flaked oats
• 1 ounce Magnum hops, 13.6% AA (first wort hop)
• 1 pound Dark Candi Inc. D Belgian candi syrup (60 minutes)
• 1 pound Dark Candi Inc. D2 Belgian candi syrup (60 minutes)
• 1 pound turbinado sugar (60 minutes)
• 1 tablet Whirlfloc (15 minutes)
• 1/2 teaspoon Wyeast yeast nutrient blend (10 minutes)
• Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity yeast

I'd be scaling down to about 10 to 13 litres

Thoughts??




https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes...-strong-dark-ale-beer-homebrewing-recipe.html

 

[Oneflewover]

Sounds good to me apart from the oats. I would leave them out as I wouldn't be looking for the body and viscosity that they would lend the finished beer. Haven't looked at the link, but what's the thinking behind the different types of sugar? Also is all the colour coming from the Candi Syrup?

I've got a BSDA recipe somewhere that I brewed last year and seemed to be well received. I'll dig it out if you are interested?

 

[strange-steve]

Good luck with this, it's a tough style to get right. I have a couple of tried and tested recipes if you're interested, I won a BJCP gold medal for this first one:
Drunken Monk Quadrupel

And I won a BJCP silver medal for this one, although personally I thought it was better and it's a very simple recipe:
Westvleteren 12 Clone

 

[Donjon]

Absolutely brilliant. The more suggestions the better thanks folks.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Have a read through Brew Day! … “Pursuit of Abbeyness XII” and the preceding articles as he iterates towards a take on Rochefort 10 - and here he muses on how the Belgians use sugars On Clones, Colour and Cassonade in response to a thread on HBT : "Realfort" 6, 8, and 10 (Rochefort Recipe Discussion) which in turn refers to some AHA posts.

And don't forget to make a small beer whilst you're about it!

 

[Donjon]

Have a read through Brew Day! … “Pursuit of Abbeyness XII” and the preceding articles as he iterates towards a take on Rochefort 10 - and here he muses on how the Belgians use sugars On Clones, Colour and Cassonade in response to a thread on HBT : "Realfort" 6, 8, and 10 (Rochefort Recipe Discussion) which in turn refers to some AHA posts.

And don't forget to make a small beer whilst you're about it!

That's very helpful. It appears that coriander is a common additive in the boil. When you suggest doing another small beer, do you have any styles in mind?!

 

[chthon]

Like @Oneflewover said, indeed, leave out the oats. If there is body in a quad, it is because of the FG, which I think is mostly because of the caramels. The trappist dark strongs are all very drinkable, with a light body. Use either Maris Otter OR Pale Ale malt, but not both. Increase your Dark Candi D, and remove the turbinado sugar.

This will make the recipe a bit more simple, a bit more trappist like as it were.

For fermentation, start out at 18° C (or at less than 20° C), but once the fermentation is ongoing, put your vessel in a place (or if fermenting in a chamber) where the temperature can increase during the fermentation, and make sure that it cannot suddenly drop.

 

[Donjon]

Hello there, thanks for all the contributions, I've had a good read through and I think I'll have a crack at 'In search of Abbeyness' by

I've been hunting down some ingredients and I'm struggling to get the Pearle hops and I'm told Northern Brewer will do - do you agree? Also, could I sub the crystal malt for Pale crystal malt?

 

[Donjon]

Have a read through Brew Day! … “Pursuit of Abbeyness XII” and the preceding articles as he iterates towards a take on Rochefort 10 - and here he muses on how the Belgians use sugars On Clones, Colour and Cassonade in response to a thread on HBT : "Realfort" 6, 8, and 10 (Rochefort Recipe Discussion) which in turn refers to some AHA posts.

And don't forget to make a small beer whilst you're about it!

I'm going to shop-online rather than locally, so I won't need any substitutions. I want to check whether the Molasses is the same as black treacle, as I already have some Lyle Black treacle. Oh, and any suggestions for the small beer I can brew afterwards?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Don't sweat the hops - any trad-ish hop will do, whether Hersbrucker/Tettnang etc or Goldings/Fuggles. This style is not driven by hop flavour. One reason I like PoA is that he's very much about following the Belgian spirit of making do with cheap stuff that's locally available to create his own interpretation that reflects his personality and terroir, whereas USians tend to reduce it down to following an "authentic" recipe to the nth degree, and somehow miss the bigger picture.

The On Clones, Colour and Cassonade article talks quite a bit about molasses - although technically it's the gloop from sugar processing that's closest to treacle, British writers tend to use it to refer to the darkest grade of sugar.

The wort will dictate what you brew as a small beer - it's going to be dark and maybe 1.035-1.045, so you're looking at something mild-like unless you want to go nuts with the yeast/hops, and head off with a hefe yeast like Lallamand Munich Classic or give it lots of New World hops and make it a sort of sessiony Cascadian dark ale.

 

[Donjon]

I think a mild would be absolutely lovely, I'm very excited about this project, I just have to have the self-control to stash it away fro the required stretch! I have entirely avoided taking any gravity readings, since the thought of losing a litre when I'm only producing 12 or so litres is too much to deal with. Would you suggest step-mashing, or just mashing as low as possible?

 

[chthon]

I'm going to shop-online rather than locally, so I won't need any substitutions. I want to check whether the Molasses is the same as black treacle, as I already have some Lyle Black treacle. Oh, and any suggestions for the small beer I can brew afterwards?

Careful with the molasses/black treacle. I used blackstrap in a WV12/St.-Bernardus Abt clone, and 5g/liter of beer was enough. It was not overpowering, but it could be tasted. You don't have that in a fresh WV12/St.-Bernardus Abt. However, it did disappear at around 6 to 8 months. Waiting for September to drink the last three.

 

[Oneflewover]

Careful with the molasses/black treacle. I used blackstrap in a WV12/St.-Bernardus Abt clone, and 5g/liter of beer was enough. It was not overpowering, but it could be tasted. You don't have that in a fresh WV12/St.-Bernardus Abt. However, it did disappear at around 6 to 8 months. Waiting for September to drink the last three.

Yeah I'd avoid the treacle too. I know (all too well!) how tempting it is to chuck the kitchen sink at a recipe, but I do believe that simple is often very much best, particularly with a beer like this. Let that yeast shine. Having said that I do think that the home made Candi Syrup I used in my quad gave lovely caramel notes to it. I also think that a chloride heavy water profile helps bring out the malt flavours.

Mash temp. Looking back at my records I used a single step at 64 degC for 90 mins. Good luck!

 

[Donjon]

Hello there. I'm sat drinking one of the brews I made from the recipe that Northern Brewer suggested - In search of Abbeyness. I created my own candi sugar and enjoyed brewing this batch so much I immediately made the same beer again.

I tucking into one of the resulting bottles. It's quite sweet, extremely strong and the dark plumby caramel flavours are really brilliant. It does definitely have more sweetness and body than I intended, I assume this is because of one or all of the following

1. Mash too warm
2. Sugars not fully inverted
3. Temperature drop during the last stages of fermentation which left sugars unfermented.

I left it in primary for 4 weeks, so fingers crossed it's not 3, it is really nice, so I don't want beer fountains. What a waste that would be!

 

[Zephyr259]

When I was new to brewing I made a pretty nice belgian ale which was simply 3 kg pilsner, 1 kg malted wheat and 500g sugar, ended up with 13.5L at 1.092. Wyeast 3522 Ardennes took that to 9.3%.

I made my own dark syrup by cooking 500g of sugar with water and DAP (yeast nutrient) until it was 143c, then added water to chill and heated to 143c again a final splash of water and heat to 116c makes a reasonably shelf stable syrup. This beer was a coppery colour so not as dark as most quads but was pretty tasty for how simple it was.

Those look like good articles to read, there's also the Herman Holtrop clone of Rochefort 8 kicking about online which I want to try.

I'd be wary of making a small beer, I've started playing with partigyles and the problem with a small beer is that they tend to be thin and a bit rubbish unless you blend in some of the strong beer as they lack protein and can have too much tannin,. You could add some DME which should help and is less hassle than blending worts. Also I've found that since belgian beers get so much gravity from sugar the wort isn't actually that strong which makes a 2nd beer less feasible.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've started playing with partigyles and the problem with a small beer is that they tend to be thin and a bit rubbish unless you blend in some of the strong beer

But nobody serious ever suggests that you only make small beer from just the second runnings, as John Keeling puts it "that’s the crude way, and it ignores roughly 230 years of better practice".

Even London Pride is something like 50:50 1st and second runnings IIRC.

 

[Zephyr259]

But nobody serious ever suggests that you only make small beer from just the second runnings, as John Keeling puts it "that’s the crude way, and it ignores roughly 230 years of better practice".

Even London Pride is something like 50:50 1st and second runnings IIRC.

Historically, you are correct, but whenever I see it mentioned among homebrewers (probably mostly American) they don't mention blending and just try and throw together a beer from the sparge. Maybe it's changing as there's a few guide out there explaining why this is a bad practice.

My point here was that it seemed to be a quick comment of making a second beer where it's actually quite a bit of extra work which may not be worth the hassle.

 

[Donjon]

I didn't bother with the small beer. I've been really happy with the quality of the beer I have been producing and quality is far more important than quantity. I will definitely be brewing a version of this beer again.

I've also just bottled a Belgian Golden ale based on Delirium Tremens. Two weeks and I'll find out how it's gone!

 

[Zephyr259]

I didn't bother with the small beer. I've been really happy with the quality of the beer I have been producing and quality is far more important than quantity. I will definitely be brewing a version of this beer again.

I've also just bottled a Belgian Golden ale based on Delirium Tremens. Two weeks and I'll find out how it's gone!

Ah, I missed the time skip in the comments, glad it turned out well for you. What did you do to your sugars? The article just says he caramelised them but that's insanely vague as it could mean anything based on his temperatures.

 

[Donjon]

I did two separate batches of beer and in each of them I added 500g of table sugar which I'd boiled down with some lemon juice until it was as dark as I dare. Batch 1, I just got a whiff of burnt and was worried that I'd ruined it (not the case). Batch 2 was just as dark, but I avoided the burnt smell. The other kg was boiled in a similar manner, but until it reached a rich amber.

I don't have a thermometer capable of measuring temperatures this high, so the specific temperature is completely unknown.

-So they ended up quite sweet and with quite a bit of body - why do you think this was?