perfidy

Brew #7

For this beer, I was lucky enough to have access to the strain of yeast used by a famous Belgian-style brewery in Cooperstown, NY. In fact, this brew is a more-or-less clone of their signature ale. It is intended to be a Belgian Strong Ale, and as such is absolutely packed with fermentables - about 8 to 8 1/2 pounds of sugar in the batch as opposed to the usual 5-ish. The suggested 70 degree fermentation temperature is a challenge in my apartment, but I hope that by wrapping the bucket in a blanket, I can keep it nice and warm enough. Perhaps it's lunacy to think I can make a Belgian ale in the cold of a New England winter, but dammit! I wanna!

Both hops are straight from the source. The guy I get my supplies from has a friend in the Czech Republic who buys the local hops and ships them direct to the USA. Thus, they are as fresh as they can get. I need to exploit this connection while it lasts, as really good Styrian Goldings are hard to come by, and absolutely delicious.

As for naming this batch: Last week was the third birthday of Trogdor The Burninator. Make a more different S.

Trogdor The Burninator "Consummate V" Belgian Strongbad Ale

9.9 lbs Munton & Fisons extra light liquid malt extract (3 cans)
8 oz light Belgian candi sugar
2 oz Styrian Goldings leaf hops, 4% alpha acids, bittering
1 oz Saaz leaf hops, 3% alpha acids, flavoring
8 oz aromatic malt
8 oz crystal malt, 60L
2.5 oz chocolate malt
2 oz honey malt
1 Whirlfloc Irish moss extract tablet (clarifying agent)
EasYeast Cooperstown Belgian Ale liquid yeast

Steeped grains for 1 hour at 160 degrees +/- 10 in 1 gallon tap water.

Broght 3 gallons filtered tap water to boil. Added steeping water, LME, candi sugar, and Styrian Goldings hops. At 42 minute mark, added the Saaz hops. At the 45 minute mark, added the Whirlfloc tablet.

Cooled wort in ice bath. Added 2 gallons chilled water to fermenting bucket. Oops... a little too much. Ended up with about 5.5 gallons of wort, which is a little dangerous since I'm making a Belgian-style that will ferment vigorously, producing lots of foam and attended gases. I really, really don't want to blow the top off my bucket. Headroom is paramount!

It took hours and hours to get the wort to a good pitching temperature (73 degrees). This is because I'm an idiot.

Instead of an airlock, which only lets a trickle of air out at at time and would therefore lead to a beer explosion, I used a blowoff tube to vent this batch, made from the 3/8'' plastic tubing from my siphon setup and a short length of 1/4'' brass pipe, with the end of the tube submerged in a bucket of water. This turned out to be pointless, as the seal between the brass pipe and the grommet in the lid of my bucket was imperfect, allowing gases to escape around it. This is really not that big a deal, as the outward pressure of the fermentation will keep the bad things on the outside. I will just need to put an airlock on there once things slow down a bit.

[wik] So far so good. A very vigorous fermentation and a batch temperature of 70-73 degrees. Yay! Now all I have to do is get my porter out of my other fermenting bucket before it's time to rack this stuff to secondary. Hrm......

[alsø wik] A word about the yeast I used this time: EasYeast is a one-man company, a microbiologist from the University of New Hampshire who ranches brewing yeast on the side. He markets the strains locally in pitchable amounts (meaning you can just dump them as-is into your wort), and also sells small amounts of sterilized wort for those of us too lazy to make starter worts for our other, inferior brands of liquid yeast cultures (I'm looking at YOU, Wyeast).

[alsø alsø wik] HOLY CRAP!! Good Beer!! As of May, it's a delicious, malty, bracing, crisp, delicious Belgian Strong style with a nice backdrop of Saaz and a foreground of spicy esters. It's well-balanced, complex, and deceptively easy-drinking. Ohhhh, I kick ass.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] As of October, the last six pack of this stuff is really nice! Fading, mellower, but taking on lovely pear flavors. I bet I could get a good year out of this. Outstanding.