Friday, November 2, 2007

First Belgian Tripel

It's about time I finally made one. My friend Jeremy and I are going to crank this sucker out on Monday night.

Seeing that it is 10 gallons at an OG target of 1.090, I need to make a HUGE starter this weekend. Will probably use WL500 Trappists ale yeast.

The recipe is coming together to look like

85% Belgian Pils
10% Belgian Aromatic
5% Caramunic (not sure about this one)

Hop schedule will be Northern for bittering and possible Saaz for aroma. Target IBU 30 or so.

Time to do the math

2 comments:

SteveQ said...

Just discovered your blog. A kindred spirit! Have you done high-gravity brewing before? Tripels are tricky to make (but oh so good after a run); mashing is especially tough and sometimes the yeast gives out early.

Matthew Patten said...

I did an IPA with an OG of 1.085, pitched on to a huge yeast cake, so I think I am good to go with the high OG. I am stepping up a WL500 starter twice to get 400 billion yeast cells. My calculations say I need at least 350B.

I decided to fly sparge instead of batch sparge on this one as I have only been hitting 69% efficiency on my batch sparges.

I postponed this because I could not land on a recipe I was 100% on.

Looks like Sunday will be the day. I also reduced it to 5 gal from 10 (I don't think my mash tun could hold over 30lbs of grain).