Tripel

I brewed a Tripel again on August 3rd. Why am I just posting about it now, you say? I'm lazy.

This time around I planned to use table sugar instead of corn sugar for 20% of the fermentables. Shortly before brew day I decided I wanted to try to make my own invert sugar instead of using straight table sugar. I searched the web and some books and couldn't find a definitive method for converting table sugar to invert sugar. I did find instructions for making candi sugar, but I wanted to make a sugar syrup instead of a hard sugar product. I decided on a combo/hybrid of various instructions I found online and from advice I got through the AHA TechTalk email forum. Here's what I did: I combined 2 parts table sugar and 1 part water (by weight) with about 1 gram of citric acid powder and heated the mixture slowly on the stove until the sugar was dissolved and the mixture was simmering. I simmered for about 15 minutes, until it was a very pale straw color. Then I cooled it to add to the fermenter. You may ask yourself, "Did he really make invert sugar?" That's a very good question, and I have no way of knowing the answer. At the very least I made a sucrose syrup which was easy to add to the fermenter. At best, I fully inverted the sucrose into fructose and glucose. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but I don't have any way of knowing to what extent the sugar was inverted.

The other difference between this batch and the last was that I split it between Wyeast 1214 and 3787. 1214 is an idiot-proof yeast that has attenuated very well without any extra fuss in every beer I've used it in. 3787 (supposedly Trappist High Grav) is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I love the flavors it imparts in a beer, but other than a small Belgian Pale I haven't been able to coax reasonable attenuation out of it. I used it in the quad-style beer that went into the club's bourbon barrel project, and it petered out at about 1.030 (from around 1.100). I learned later that it prefers incremental feeding of sugars (hence my desire to make a sugar syrup that was easy to add to the fermenter). This time around I held back all the sugar on brew day and added it later. I added all the sugar to the 1214 half of the beer a couple days after fermentation started. I added half of the required sugar to the 3787 portion after a few days, then the other half a couple days later. It still petered out at 1.030. Frustrated, I gave it a couple more weeks (and roused the yeast and bumped the temp up a tad), and it only dropped 2 more points. At this point I gave up on old 3787 and when I transferred both halves to secondary I poured the slurry from the 1214 carboy into the 3787 secondary. Active fermentation started up again within a day or two, and after a few weeks good old reliable chewed it down to 1.010. The straight-1214 half of the batch finished at 1.009 before I transferred to secondary.

After transferring to secondary I had about 1/2 gallon of the 1214 beer left over, which I put into a 2L PET bottle, chilled, and carbonated with my carbonator cap. I had about 1 gallon extra of the 3787 half, which I split between two growlers. I gave one of the growlers to Matt and kept the other for myself. I drank the leftover 1214 beer a few days ago, and I gotta say it was pretty tasty. I moved the 3787 leftovers into the 2L bottle yesterday, carbonated it, and had a glass last night. Again, pretty tasty. I can't wait to get these beers into bottles and compare them side-by-side. Bottling should happen within the next couple of weeks for the 1214 half, and a few weeks later for the 3787.

My recipe and procedures were essentially the same as my last tripel, so I won't go into the nitty gritty details. The only changes were I formulated for 1.080, used self-inverted table sugar instead of corn sugar, added it to the fermenters rather than the kettle, and split the batch between the two different yeasts.

I know, I know, you thought this blog was dead. It's been a busy summer, and when I have had time I haven't had motivation to update you on my brewing adventures. I've brewed several beers that I haven't posted about, and other beer & brewing related stuff has been going on as well. I've been meaning to post for some time about the schwag I got for the gold medal my Tripel won at NHC. Here's a picture of the haul. I got the 5 Star cleaning kit (big bottle of Star San and a big tub of PBW), an AHA glass, a Sam Adams chilling bucket, the book "The Best of American Beer & Food," a bottle of The Sixth Glass Quad from Boulevard Brewing Company, and the gold medal. Pretty cool. Also, recipes and mugshots for all the gold medal winners were published in the Sept/Oct issue of Zymurgy. You'll find my recipe on page 46. Here are a few more pics:

I was pleasantly surprised Saturday evening to discover that my Tripel took the gold medal in Category 18 at the National Homebrew Competition. I certainly wasn't expecting such a favorable result considering the fact it was going up against the best home-brewed beers in the country, and that it placed 3rd in the NW Region 1st round. I guess the two months of aging between the 1st and 2nd rounds helped a lot. I can't wait to receive my score sheets and see the judges comments. Since I can't leave well enough alone, I plan to brew it again soon with some minor modifications. I think I'll use table sugar instead of corn sugar this time around, and ferment half of it with that mysterious beast known as Wyeast 3787. I'll use 1214 again on the other half as a control. I was pretty disappointed with the performance I got out of 3787 when I used it for the Bourbon Barrel Big Belgian Beer. I think it petered out at about 69% attenuation that time. One mistake I made is I didn't allow the temperature to rise during fermentation. Also, Wyeast says it benefits from incremental feeding of sugar, which I didn't do last time either. Oh, and I'll probably use Weyermann Pilsner malt instead of Castle, since Castle has become very hard to come by of late, locally at least.

My tripel placed 3rd in Category 18 in the 1st round (NW Region) of the National Homebrew Competition. Placing in the top 3 makes it eligible for the 2nd round. For the first round, the country (plus Canada) is split up into 10 regions. Each region judges beers separately and the top 3 beers from each region in each category advance to the 2nd round. There were 5,643 entries total in the 1st round with a possibility for around 840 beers, meads, and ciders to advance to the 2nd round. My beer was up against 28 other entries in Category 18 in the 1st round and assuming everyone eligible sends their beers in for the 2nd round there should be a total of 30 entries in that category. I'm curious to see how well it stacks up against the best home brewers in the country. 2nd round judging will take place June 19 during the National Homebrew Conference. Whatever happens in the 2nd round, I'm pretty happy with the results so far considering this is the first Tripel I've ever brewed and the first time I've entered a beer in the NHC. I wasn't the only club member to place in the 1st round. Matt's Lil Jib Saison took 2nd in Category 16. Maybe one of these days he'll get around to posting something about it.

I bottled the other half of the batch of Tripel today. Netted nineteen corked 750ml bottles and thirteen 12 ozers. I primed with table sugar and shot for 3 volumes of CO2. John's corker worked great. I may have pushed the corks in a little too far, but I'm hoping that the pressure will push them back out against the top of the cages. There's about 3-4 mm of space between the top of the corks and the top of the cages. I can't wait for this stuff to carbonate, but I do have a keg of it to tide me over.

Jay over at the Hedonist Beer Jive posted about how underwhelmed he was with Victory's Golden Monkey Tripel, a beer I was very disappointed with myself. Read the comment I left (under the userame muddball) for the reasons I didn't like it.

I had planned to cold condition my tripel for another week or two, but after tasting the sample I brought to the Barleywine Meeting I just couldn't wait. I kegged half of the batch (5 gallons) today. I was planning to only keg 2.5 gallons, but again my desire to drink this beer got the better of me. Since it had been cold conditioning for two weeks @ 40° already, I was able to force carbonate it right away rather than having to wait overnight for it to chill. After I let it sit for a couple hours to settle, I pulled off the first glass. Mmmmm. Now that's a tripel. I may be slightly biased, but the only bad thing I can say about this beer is that it's a little dark for the style, and since it is still very young it will (hopefully) only improve with age. Even my wife was impressed ("It tastes like a tripel, like the tripels you tell me are good." - OK, she's not a big Belgian beer fan).

The other half of the batch is destined for the bottle. I have 19 750ml Belgian beer bottles (and counting) that most of the remaining 5 gallons will go into, complete with corks and wire cages. The rest will go into 12 ozers. Those will be allowed to condition and age while I nurse what's in the keg.

I sampled the Tripel a week ago, after one week in primary, and the gravity was down to 1.010. That's an apparent attenuation of over 86%, which is pretty awesome. I transferred to secondary in Monday, and afterwards there was still a little bit of active fermentation going on, so it may drop a couple more points.

The sample I drew Saturday still had a lot of yeast in suspension. Rumor has it the 1214 strain is a poor flocculater. The initial taste had that good tripely character, but it was overshadowed by a yeasty/meaty/slick flavor/mouthfeel I attribute to the yeast. I covered the glass and put it in the fridge overnight to let the yeast settle and tasted it again the next day. After the yeast settled out it was quite good. When it's finished and carbonated I expect it will be quite good.

My plan is to bottle most of this batch. I want to put up several 750 ml corked bottles to let age, bottle a bunch in 12 ouncers, and maybe keg 3 gallons or so. I'll borrow a corker from someone in the club, either Matt's hand corker or John's Ferrari. Hopefully the Ferrari.

I brewed a tripel on Saturday. I used a very basic recipe: 80% of fermentables from Castle Pilsner Malt and 20% from Corn Sugar. I doughed in for a protein rest @122° with a relatively thick 1.2 qt/lb water-to-grain raitio, then raised to saccharification temp with a combination of infusion and direct heat. My tun wasn't large enough to bring it all the way up with infusion alone. In retrospect I probably could have gotten away with a 1:1 w:g for the first rest and had enough room to infuse all the way up to 147°. I had about 13.5 gallons in the kettle pre boil. Hops were imported Styrian Goldings for bittering and imported Saaz for flavor & aroma. After chilling I ended up with about 10.6 gallons total at a gravity of 1.080, split between 2 six gallon carboys. I pitched 2L starters of Wyeast 1214 into each carboy. That was around 7 pm Saturday night. By 7 am Sunday morning active, vigorous fermentation was in progress and two hours later foam was blowing out the blowoff tubes. The wort was at about 66° when I pitched the yeast and I'll let it rise to the 70-72 range during the ferment. I want to get the most out of this yeast and not repeat the experience I had with 3787 on the big Belgian I brewed for the bourbon barrel. That one crapped out at about 69% apparent attenuation. I'm hoping for min. 80% this time.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML