Brew Night: Three Strikes

Faux Beer Barrels in Gaston's Tavern

It's 1:15 and I've just hit a boil 10 minutes ago.  Its going to be a late one. With a grist of 12 lbs of Weyemann Pils I'll be boiling for 90 minutes. There are a lot of hurdles for this beer to overcome. But nothing is impossible. First, plan on force carbonating and serving this at a super bowl party 2 weeks from tomorrow. No wait today. Tripels are usually conditioned for at least a couple weeks. Secondly, my homebrew shop only had one 3 month old White Labs WLP 530 Abbey Ale. I only have a 2 L flask so that's as big a starter as I could make. I was just reading a great article by Stan Hieronymus about Belgian fermentations from a 2006 BYO article. Westmalle pitches at about .25 Million cells per mL per degree Plato. Huh, good news for me. Too bad they are using top cropped well acclimated yeast. We'll see how this sucker turns out. Last tripel I made ended up a bit sweet. So this time I cut the gravity down, hoping for higher attenuation but arriving near the same ABV. Recipe anyone?

THREE STRIKES:

6 gallons

OG 1.068

FG  1.008 (hopefully)

35 IBU

12 lbs Pilsener Malt

  2 lbs Cane Sugar (added to boil)

1 oz Mt. Hood @ 90 minutes 5.2 % Alpha Acids.

1 oz Tettnanger @ 45 minutes 3.9 % Alpha Acids.

1 oz Tettnanger @ 15 minutes 3.9% Alpha Acids.

WLP 530 - Abbey Ale 2 L starter

RO water with 1 tsp Gypsum (4g), 1 tsp Calcium Chloride (3.4g), and 5 mL Lactic Acid

Leftover Wort Fermented with Red Star Montrachet.

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