Sometimes simplicity is best, although I have a knack for mucking up something pretty simple. It is just how my brain works. I brewed this a couple of months ago, and it sat on primary for about 6 weeks, and another 8 weeks or so in a bright tank, all at room temps. For the past 2 weeks, the Tripel has been lagering on tap in my kegerator. Oh – three malts, three hops = Triple. Not original at all.
Tripels are one of my favorite Belgian styles, driven by pils, sugars and yeast characters. I subbed in some Aromatic for Biscuit, and let the kettle cooked piloncillo sugar drive the color to a golden orange.
Here’s the recipe:
[beerxml recipe=https://www.accidentalis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Tripel-Triple.xml metric=false cache=-1]
Big beers mean lower efficiency, and this was no different, barely hit 70%. I collected a massive amount of wort and had to watch the boil carefully. Sort of snuck up on a hard rolling boil when I was confident I could do so without a boil over. Even so – there was a sticky mess on the kettle and burner after.
I made a modest salt addition to my RO liquor, 1.1 g Gypsum, 2.5 g Epsom and 2.5 Calcium Chloride into the mash (remember there is aciduated in the mash) to hit a 5.2 pH, followed with 0.8 g Gypsum, 1.8 g Epsom and 1.8 g Calcium Chloride into the sparge water.
I added the table sugar into the primary fermenter, dissolved with a little yeast nutrient, during the first two days of fermentation. The brown sugar indicated was replaced with Piloncillo cones in the boil kettle for 90 minutes. I need to add piloncillo into BeerSmith, just been lazy about that.
I also mixed (2) re-hydrated T-58 packets with a single vial of White Labs Trappist High Gravity yeast, hoping the latter would allow it to dry out. This actually finished at 1.009 for a 8.7% ABV, but remains very sweet to the taste with very little hot alcohol taste. Light hits of caramel banana, tiny bit of clove. Fermented in primary at 72 F with a rise into 80 F after 3 weeks to lower the gravity some.
This will continue to lager through the holidays if I can keep my glass away from the tap. Will post a more formal tasting review with pics at a later date.
I also racked a half gallon of this onto a slurry from a bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru when I transferred into my bright tank. I bottled two bottles of extremely bright beer about 2 weeks ago – and hope these will age into some sourness over time. The taste into the bottle was very interesting – and the aroma quite musty. Should be fun!
