With all the barrel-aged
barleywines and tripels and 9% saisons that my brother has been making down in
NC, I decided it was time for me to produce a big beer too. Since I had just
finished kegging a batch of Friar Brock (a Patersbier) using my
3rd generation Wyeast 1214 (the Chimay strain), I figured that brewing a
stronger Belgian based upon a Chimay style made the most sense. I opted for the
Belgian Strong Dark/Quadrupel recipe that was available on candisyrup.com’s website.
A quick word about the Wyeast 1214 yeast I am using for my Belgian beers. The first time I brewed with it (a Hennepin clone), I managed to choose the one truly hot week in my house and fermented without the benefit of temperature control. At 75F and hotter, the quantity of banana and bubblegum produced by 1214 is truly astounding (and produces beer more suitable for monkeys than man). At lower temperatures than Wyeast recommends though (pitch at 60-62F and only allow to rise after several days of fermentation) it produces a really tasty Belgian profile on the fruity range without being really identifiable as bananas. However, at this lower temperature it can have a lag time as long as 48 hours even when using large starters. I've never had a stuck fermentation once it gets started, but the temptation is to raise the temperature early (but beware banana bombs) or to repitch. So I suppose that's a long-winded way to say that it's a pretty temperamental yeast strain. Now that I'm aware of its tendencies I really enjoy its flavour profile though.
So based upon that, my plan is to carefully
control fermentation temps for this beer until it’s close to gravity, rack it
to a keg, and let it naturally condition in my basement for 6-12 months. I’ll
have a special release tapping party for it with mussels and Belgian chocolates
this fall!
Mashing notes: Mashed in 11 lbs Bohemian Pilsner, 0.5 lbs CaraFoam, and 1 lb torrified wheat at 147F with 4.5G, stirring every
10-15mins for a 75 minute mash. Batch sparged with 5.3G of 180F water to hit
170F for a 10min rest before vorlauf. After first runnings, I put the
kettle on to boil and added second runnings every time I had extracted
~1G. I ended up with closer to 7.5G of wort and boiled for 105 minutes
rather than 90.
Boil Additions:
1 oz Saaz and 1 oz
Hallertau (both US versions) at 60 min
1 oz Hallertau at 30
2 lbs D45 Belgian Candi
Syrup at 20
½ whirlfloc tablet at 5
After flameout I chilled to 62F and ended up
with just under 5.25G of wort into chronical. Aerated well and then
pitched my Patersbier yeast cake (roughly 2 pitchers of yeasty trub) into
chronical and adjusted FTSS to a temperature of 62F; fermentation schedule
is to increase 1F per day to 68F after seeing obvious fermentation at 62 for
one day. I had broken my hydrometer by knocking it off a shelf, and
when I measured OG of a sample I had stored away it was 1.074. I added enough brown sugar to the fermenter to raise the OG to 1.085, which
seems more appropriate for a quad (and only raised sugar to 18% fermentables
which is within style guidelines).
Fermentation went as expected, with the exception that my 1214 house yeast crushed the quad to 1.004 (95% attenuation!) for 10.6% ABV. I'm a firm believer in this yeast after a few generations; it seems to love my basement temperatures and the FTSS ramp-up in the chronical. When I pulled a sample and then subsequently kegged the beer, I was wowed by everything about it except the color. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but the SRM was far too low for a quad in my opinion (you can see from the hydrometer reading to the left). I happened to have some Carafa II Special (dehusked) malt at the house, so I steeped 2 oz in a pint of water at 152F for 30 mins, boiled it for 10 mins to sanitize it, and then used a 4oz pour of the quad and a 1/2 teaspoon to play around with how much steeped liquid to get the color right without changing the flavour profile. I was worried about roastiness, coffee flavours, and astringency. It turned out that 3/4 teaspoon per 4 oz (equivalent to 1.5 oz Carafa 2 Special in the mash) resulted in the correct color profile to my eye (left vs. right below). Now to store it in the keg under moderate carbonation and then drink it when it's properly aged this fall!
