Friar Brock ABT 10 (Quadrupel)

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!

Sacch Trois Wheat Beer

Sacch Trois Wheat beer

Recipe inspired by 3Floyds' Gumballhead and Mad Fermentationist's 100% Trois IPA
Brewed on Dec 12, 2015

This is a pretty simple recipe that probably isn’t by itself worth a writeup. But I decided to post it because (a) it’s probably my favorite tropical fruity/hoppy beer I’ve ever made and among the best I’ve personally tasted and (b) I tried a few different things while brewing this batch that worked out quite well. Those things were as follows:

• Zythos as a flame out/whirlpool hop. I have brewed a single hop Zythos IPA before, and found the flavor quite nice (similar to Amarillo but more pure orange flavor) but the dry hop aroma was really disappointing even with large additions in the fermenter and the keg. I decided to try something different with the residual Zythos and use it exclusively in the boil/whirlpool and then use on Amarillo and Citra for dry hopping. This potentially saves quite a lot of $$ (Amarillo is $10/lb more than Zythos in Canada right now). The result worked out better than I expected; I believe this may be the best use for this hops variety and is something I'll definitely try again.

• The use of WL 644 in a wheat beer with a variety of fruity hops (Zythos, Citra, and Amarillo) really turned out even better than I imagined. The pineapple, mango esters from the yeast and the citrusy/tropical aromas and flavors from the hops go together seamlessly. Even moreso than with the JWIPA I brewed with centennial, citra, and Amarillo. The FG was a bit higher than most of my beers, and in combination with Amarillo it results in a really juicy character to the beer that goes really well with the grain bill. It’s the dead of winter here, but this beer is a little taste of summer sunshine. 

•  Finally, I chose to try and get a little stronger dry hop by cold crashing in the chronical to separate out the yeast, transferring to a CO2-purged keg, and then hopping in the keg by using weighted down nylon bags. This was also a good move, because the final beer is really bright tasting in terms of hops profile. I’ll continue this practice for hoppy beers.

So in the end, even with a pretty straightforward recipe, I learned a few things I can apply to future beers, and the actual beer is phenomenal. So I consider this batch a success!

Sacch. Trois Wheat 
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.1%
Calories: 190 (12 oz)
Carbs: 17.9g (12 oz)

Grain bill:

6 lbs. - Wheat Malt

5 lbs. - 2-Row Pale Malt

1 lb. - CaraRed Malt

0.5lb – Rice Hulls

Mash:
Mashed at 152 for 60 minutes

Sparged at 175 after 10 min rest

Boil:
1 oz Zythos at 60

2 oz Zythos at flame out

2 oz Zythos at 175F whirlpool for 20 minutes

* 0.5 WhirlFloc tablet at 5mins

After whirlpool, I chilled to 70F with immersion chiller and moved beer into chronical with continuous agitation to aerate wort. I ended up with 5.25 gallons of 1.058 OG wort after hop trub loss in the kettle.

Fermentation:
Pitched a 2L starter of second generation WL 644 Sacch. Trois (harvested from JWIPA) into chronical with initial temperature of 65F. I allowed the temp to free rise, reaching a max of 69F after 48 hours. As temperature began to fall, I raised the chronical temperature to 75F over 3 days using an aquarium heater to provide 85F water to the chronical's FTSS. I maintained 75F until a stable FG of 1.012 was reached after 12 days. The beer was then cold crashed at 38F for 24 hours, kegged, and dry hopped..

Dry hop: 2 oz Amarillo/2 oz Citra for 3 days.

Keg hop: 2 oz Amarillo/2oz Citra until it kicks.

After 3 days of room temperature dry hop, the hop bag was removed, replaced with fresh keg hops, and the keg was force carbonated and tapped on Dec. 30.

Whiskey Barrel Aged Tripel

Throughout our brewing evolution, I have gravitated to more technical, traditional German and Belgian beers.  While we've managed to really fine tune our JWIPA recipe over the past few years (and an unknown number of batches between the Canuck and Cackalacky Peck brew systems), I've also spent a good deal of time working on step mashes and improved yeast performance.  When I got a used 5 gallon whiskey barrel that will ultimately be inoculated with a variety of Brettanomyces cultures to bring the funk, I needed to find a way to tone down the strong oak and whiskey flavors.  With that  thought, the most Peck thing we could do would be to toss in a perfectly normal Belgian Tripel into a small batch whiskey barrel. 


Westmalle Tripel recipe from candisyrup.com
OG: 1.075
FG: 1.010
ABV: 9.2%
SRM: 5

Grain Bill:
12.5 lbs Belgian 2 row pilsner
2 lbs Belgian candy syrup, 5 L
0.5 lbs Belgian candy sugar, clear

Mash schedule:
Protein rest at 124F for 20 min
Saccharification at 147F for 60 min
Mash out at 170F for 10 minutes

Hop schedule:
1 oz Saaz at 60 min
1 oz Hallertau at 45 min
1.5 oz Styrians at 20 min

I also added Belgian candy syrup and sugar with 10 minutes left

Transferred to Chronical fermenter and used FTSS as immersion chiller to chill to pitching temp of 66F.  Pitched 800mL starter of White Labs 540 Belgian Abbey yeast.


Primary fermentation:
Let fermentation temp increase 1F each day for a week.
WL540 was a beast after about 7 days.  The first sample I took looked like a parfait and took forever to settle enough to even get a reading


Secondary in barrel: 
Racked to new 5 gallon oak whiskey barrel once gravity hit 1.014.  Barrel quickly imparted oak and whiskey flavors, so it was ready to rack to keg to age in 4 days.  By that time gravity was down to 1.010.


Beer is currently aging in keg at room temp for 3 weeks before putting into the keezer and force carbing to ~2.4 CO2 volumes (9 psi at 36F)

Justin Wilson IPA

Back in the days when we first started brewing, we would communicate on the phone during brew days pretty regularly and share tips and tricks about the process of brewing. But trading recipes was more tricky, since it would basically end up as "just throw a handful of hops in when it feels right to do so". The type of hops, the ABV, the SRM, and the yeast used for our IPAs would vary tremendously batch to batch. Nonetheless, we named them all after the cajun chef who would famously add ingredients when it felt right while saying "Haw Hawn". Thus Justin Wilson IPA (JWIPA) was born. Since then we've refined it  and it is one of the few beers that we both brew year-round. Here's the recipe as it currently is served at both of our houses (more or less).

Justin Wilson IPA

OG: 1.068-7
FG: 1.008-12
ABV: ~7
SRM: 6

Grain Bill (13.5lbs grain)
11.5 lbs Canadian 2row
1.0 lb Munich I (Munich light)
0.5 lbs Crystal 20 (Carared)
0.5lbs Carapils (Carafoam)

Mash at 154 F for 60 minutes and sparge with 175F water to collect 7.5gallons of ~ 1.050 wort.

4 oz hops = 1 PBU (Peck Brewing Unit)

Hop Schedule
1 oz Centennial (60 minute)
1 oz Centennial, 1 oz Amarillo, 2 oz Citra (half at flame out, half at 175F for a 30 minute whirlpool)
1 oz Centennial, 1 oz Amarillo, 2 oz Citra (dry hop, 2-3 days)
1 oz Centennial, 1 oz Amarillo, 2 oz Citra (keg hop)

Basically 12 oz of hops after flame out gives the desired flavor profile for JWIPA

Fermentation
Ferment at 75 F with either Safale US-05 (JWIPA classic) or White Labs 644 Sacch Trois (current JWIPA).  Both yeasts should be good for 80% attenuation or better and result in a dry, crisp IPA. After FG is stable then dry hop, cold crash, and force carbonate.