Belgian Quadrupel

[greenxpaddy]

There's only one way to find out. Put the beers side by side and decide for yourself if you can taste a stressed yeast flavour note with the way you do it. Maybe its not possible to get too much flavour in a strong aged Belgian.

The main point is you are stressing the buggery out of the yeast so you best use a heck of a lot. Especially if you (are mad enough to) reuse a yeast from a 6% or 8% ferment

[dean_wales]

OK so I think that stress or no stress I am going to have to ferment the 40 Litres of Leffe and harvest the yeast cake from that. I would probably have messed about with collecting the yeast cake pre-sugar additon at around 4.5% but realised that I dont have enough (four) 5 Gallon fermentors free to do so much racking.

So my remaining questions are...

Would I be wise to pitch the whole yeast cake from the 40 litres of Leffe to brew the 23 litres of Quadrupel or follow MrMalty and just use some of it? I will have to pitch it fairy cool (at like 18c or 19c) before gradually increasing to about 24c or 25c by the end of fermentation. Otherwise I will end up with one estery mess all over the floor!

I will mash cool, but do I need to reduce the Caravienna and Aromatic grains to reduce the FG? I dont want the beer to be too pale - I want some toasted carmel flavours. In hindsight I should have got hold of some of the Dingemans Special B as this would have achieved the desired colour with less impact on the FG. What do you guys reckon? Anyone got 250g of it knocking about they fancy posting?!!

Is it usual to add adjuncts to a beer like this in terms of citrus peels or spices etc?

I have heard that carbonation can be an issue as the yeast hasnt got enough oomph left in to work through the priming sugar. Is that true? Some say to reseed with SO4 at bottling to avoid this?

Is my hopping / IBu in the right ballpark? Its very difficult when you dont know what your FG will be to strike a good amlty/biteer balance. I only have one pack of Styrians available to hop this brew (some magnum as a non-style fallback if my IBU's are too low).

Thanks,

Dean.

[Barley Water]

Of course you are making a Belgian beer so you can pretty much do what you wish. Most Quads I have seen are somewhat like a Dubbel on steriods. What I mean by that is that they are darker than say a Tripple and also display dried fruit/plumb/current/rummy flavors (like say an Akel Bruin, great beer by the way). To get those, you end up using some Special B and also some liquid Belgian candi sugar. Anyhow, as far as the yeast starter is concerned, if you use yeast from a big beer, it may well ferment the monster you plan but you may also throw off some fusels which could mess up the flavor, just something to think about. By the way, I mash in a converted Gott cooler and I get rather lousy extract efficiency when I do big beers. In fact, I don't think I could do something in the 1.100 OG range without having capacity issues. My solution to that would be to do a double mash however I have not tried doing one yet. Anyway, let us know how things turn out and have fun.

[smdjoachim]

Im confused on the reduced efficiency/need to boil down points. Why is this? If I followed the reciepe and boiled it for three hours I would be way below the 5 Gallon batch size? Why will my efficiency be so low?? Do you sparge a beer like this less or something?

Dean.

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2012/02/2 ... odcast-33/
Explains why

[jmc]

Add your 20 % sugar during fermentation, after a day or 3/4, just when fermentation starts to slow down.

+1 to that

I add sugar as a cooled boiled syrup after about 7 days once yeast have done most of their work on malt fermentables.
Yeast are lazy and will ferment whatever is easiest to work on first.

300g of wheat malt will probably help head retention, but I also agree that with a triple keep 'sweeter' adjucts to a minimum.
Maybe replace them with some dark-candi sugar if you want a bit of colour and a bit more Belgian flavour.
Its cheap and easy to make. Its just sugar boiled with a little (citric) acid to the colour you want. Search on here for details.

I think the reason people suggest your efficiency may be low is that you'll not have much sparge water (as normal) if you want to boil for a reasonable time.

Alternatively, if you want to maximise efficiency you can sparge as normal to get to a your normal minimum target wort SG (say 1015),
but you'll then have loads of wort, and it will need a very long boil to get to the OG you want.

I'm sure you'll have a lovely brew whether it ends up a quadruple or triple.
Good Luck!

[jmc]

...
I have heard that carbonation can be an issue as the yeast hasnt got enough oomph left in to work through the priming sugar. Is that true? Some say to reseed with SO4 at bottling to avoid this?
...
Thanks,

Dean.

I'd store some of your harvested Leffe yeast in a fridge for use at bottling time.
I'm not sure if SO4 could cope with the shock of being thrown into some 8%+ brew.

[dean_wales]

Hi Guys,

I know. Its been a while. Aaaaaaanyway...

I have revised the recipe, what do you all think? Is that enough simple sugars to make it drinkable and not too sweet? I will add any simle sugars after initial surge of fermentation.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.095 SG
Estimated Color: 39.3 EBC
Estimated IBU: 29.6 IBUs
Estimated ABV: 10% to 11%

Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %

Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7.50 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.7 EBC) Grain 2 77.3 %
0.25 kg Caravienne Malt (43.3 EBC) Grain 5 2.6 %
0.25 kg Aromatic Malt (51.2 EBC) Grain 4 2.6 %
0.25 kg Wheat Malt, Bel (3.0 EBC) Grain 6 2.6 %
0.30 kg Special B (Dingemans) (290.6 EBC) Grain 3 3.1 %
1.00 kg Homemade Candi Syrup (Amber? 75 EBC) Sugar 13 10.3 %

50.00 g Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] - Boil 90.0 mi Hop 7 24.6 IBUs
30.00 g Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] - Boil 10.0 mi Hop 9 5.0 IBUs
20.00 g Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] - Aroma Steep Hop 10 0.0 IBUs

0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 8 -
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Primary 0.0 mins) Other 12 -

1.0 White Labs #WLP530 Yeastcake Yeast 11 -

0.15 kg Sugar, Table (Priming) (2.0 EBC) Sugar 14 1.5 %

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out

Total Grain Weight: 9.70 kg

----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 22.82 l of water at 71.0 C 64.4 C 75 min


Notes:
------
Reseed with retained WLP530 at bottling

Thanks,

Dean.