Simple Belgian Tripel Recipe Query

[delboy]

Cheers for all your input folks. What do you think of the following recipe

4.50 Kg Pilsner Malt
1.15 Kg Sucrose
(Roughly an 80:20 split)

Just asking this for my own benefit since i don't know.

JPs 4.5 Kg malt and 1.15 Kg sucrose comes out at 20 % all things being equal.
But if you take into account that malt produces only about 80 % fermentables at best and sucrose is 100 % fermentable then if you redo the calc on this basis the sucrose is accounting for something closer to 25 % of the total fermentables.

When people talk about 10 or 20 % sugar in a recipe do they mean weight for weight or do they mean total fermentables??

I mean that 5 % could push you over the brink into cider material?

[oblivious]

Cheers for all your input folks. What do you think of the following recipe

4.50 Kg Pilsner Malt
1.15 Kg Sucrose
(Roughly an 80:20 split)

Just asking this for my own benefit since i don't know.

JPs 4.5 Kg malt and 1.15 Kg sucrose comes out at 20 % all things being equal.
But if you take into account that malt produces only about 80 % fermentables at best and sucrose is 100 % fermentable then if you redo the calc on this basis the sucrose is accounting for something closer to 25 % of the total fermentables.

When people talk about 10 or 20 % sugar in a recipe do they mean weight for weight or do they mean total fermentables??

I mean that 5 % could push you over the brink into cider material?

Percentage of fermentable’s

That just urban legend, a number of the Belgian brewers use up to 30% sugar

The idea of cidery effect can come from source 1) extract brewer using poor extract that is not full malt or poorly stored extract.

2) Yeast will metabolise the simplest sugars first, premature termination of the yeast’s fermentation, such as oxygen depletion, premature flocculation, and poor pitch/yeast health. This may result in a staling ferment and the intermitted metabolite in alcohol production is Acetaldehyde, which can have an apply aroma

[steve_flack]

Apparently, according to the guys at brewlabs it should be based on the percentage of the extract. So you are right that 20% by weight is rather more by extract. I've always done it by weight though.

IMO what causes cider flavours is crap beer kits made with cheap ingredients that then get diluted further with a bucket of sugar. What do you expect when over half your extract comes from sucrose? The yeast is deprived of nutrients for a start.

Belgian strong ales have plenty of malt in them - often the equivalent of a 1.060 or 1.070 beer - before they start hitting the tate and lyle.

[J_P]

So assuming 75% efficiency in 20l I should use

4.50 KG Pilsner Malt ~ 50.6 degrees of gravity
0.68 Kg Sucrose ~ 12.6 degrees of gravity

Or Scale the malt up to be 80% of the fermentables after mashing?

[steve_flack]

Or Scale the malt up to be 80% of the fermentables after mashing?

Not sure what you mean by that.

Basically either approach will work but you'd get a different beer depending on how much sugar you use. Personally I think 20% by weight is a little high and would be happier with a little less. As I said I always do my calculations by weight (regardless of what I was taught ) so I would go with 15% by weight.

The thing with doing it by extract is that you should do that for all ingredients (including things like crystal in bitters) - it does become rather a pain in the a*se so that's why I do it by weight.

[delboy]

Thanks for the responses guys thats cleared things up for me.

OB, i have horden hillbillys lager conditioning at the moment, it has quite a lot of sugar in it so i'll be able to see this first hand. The hydrometer samles so far have been very agreeable with no hint of 'cider twang' so as you rightly say this is likely to be even less of a problem in big belgians.

Were it might make a differnence is in the body of the beer, me and you could make the same brew and end up with appreciable different beers on the basis of sugar added, depending on the method used to interpret the recipe ie weight or total fermentables.

[steve_flack]

Were it might make a differnence is in the body of the beer, me and you could make the same brew and end up with appreciable different beers on the basis of sugar added, depending on the method used to interpret the recipe ie weight or total fermentables.

Yes, a beer with more sugar will be drier and less sweet than one brewed with a greater proportion of malt. That's one reason the Belgians use sugar - to keep the beer drinkable and not cloying - that sugar is a cheap source of alcohol is obviouly an added plus.

[oblivious]

I know I put said some Belgians use up to 30% sugar, Rochefort for example has a very unusual brewing practices, they brew on Monday Tuesday, Thursday and Friday

They pitch yeast only on Monday wort and add each batch on top of the last. This continuous feed allow the yeast to reach those high attenuation levels

[oblivious]

This is also a good listen

The BN Sunday Session 6-17-07 - Trappist Rochefort

[J_P]

Or Scale the malt up to be 80% of the fermentables after mashing?

Not sure what you mean by that.

Sorry I wasn't making myself clear (it was early) What I meant was I could either scale back the sugar so that it accounted for 20% of the fermentables or alternatively I could keep the volume of sugar the same and increase the malt so that 80% of the fermentables came from the malt. Is that any clearer?

[steve_flack]

Why don't you just decide what gravity or ABV you want and work from that?

[J_P]

I'll work something out for about a 1.075 gravity beer when I get home

[J_P]

I'm going with the following grain / sugar bill

5.00kg Pilsner Malt
0.75kg Sucrose

That should give me a wort of around 1.070