I’ve brewed a few Belgian Dubbels over the years. To be honest, I haven’t been totally “in love” with the recipe I’ve been using. I have practicing minimalism in brewing recently, but for this brew I decided to build a more complex recipe.

Here is what I came up with:

11lb 15oz of Belgian Pilsner Malt
2lb 4oz Belgian Cara Malt 15L
2lb Biscuit malt
2lb cara Munich malt 50L
2.4oz Chocolate malt
6oz Belgian candy sugar – dark
1oz German Norther Brewer 60min
1.5 oz styrian 30min
.5 oz German tettneng 20min
Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abby II

I struck a little later than usual, getting rolling at 10am. I held 150f (target was 149) for an hour and sparged with 3.5 gallons at 175. The grain bed got up to 168, but not the whole time and I did not mash out.

The volume was low so I needed to add 1qt at cool down. The pre-boil gravity was 1.066 and the OG was set for 1.080, but after the addition of the 1qt of water is was 1.074, right on my target. My efficiency was 65% so I’m happy.

At the end, I had plenty of wort at the end, but decided to hit my target and water the volume down. The color looked good and I’m excited for this brew. I was lazy and skipped my starter so we’ll see what impact that has. I have a spot in my house that should get 75+ for temp so I should have a good environment for those yeast.

• 7lbs US 2Row Pale Malt
• 5lbs Wheat Malt
• 4.2oz Flaked oats
• 1lb Belgian candy sugar (45min)
• 1oz UK Goldings Hops (60min)
• .5oz Czech Saas (15min)
• 1oz Bitter Orange peel (half at 15min and half at 3min)
• .5oz  ground coriander (15min)
• .25tsp crushed cumin seeds
• 1tsp crushed grains of paradise
• Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier

Since it was going to be a rainy Sunday anyway, I decided to take my time and brew later than usual.  I started not long after 10:30am and finished at about 2pm.  This was a 5 gallon batch with relatively simple set up so I was lazy and decided to skip the starter.

I still set my recipes at 65% efficiency although it seems like I am doing better than that with my new grain mill.  More to come on that…

I struck with 4 gal of water at 175f which made my mash about 153f, slightly above my target 151f, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.  I ran a fly sparge with an additional 4gal of water at 185f which successfully raised my mash bed temp to 168f.  My sparge ran for about 25min before finishing off.  For the second time since I got my pH meter, I did a pH reading.  This one was 5.9.  I am not quite at the point of doing anything about, just trying to get the reading process into by brew day.

I was able to reach a boil not long after the sparge was finished because I have been keeping my wort on heat while I run off.  This is a huge help on time and its made a lot easier when only brewing 5gal.  Everything else pretty much followed schedule, but there was one thing that kept throwing me off.

Like many brewers, I am paranoid that something is broken so I take readings with multiple devices.  I use a hydrometer and a refractometer, I used a digital and a dial thermometer and so on.  In this case I took a readying of the pre-boil gravity with my refractometer and saw that I was at 15brix or about 1.060 (way above the projected 1.044).  However, when I took a hydrometer reading, I was at 1.044.  I was puzzled but just assumed that I had measured the refractometer too hot or something.

Later, when I was getting the OG, my refractometer was reading 1.066 (16brix) while my hydrometer was reading 1.046.  Suddenly I noticed that the paper in the hydrometer had slid out of place, thus explaining the discrepancy.  With that in mind, my efficiency was more in the ball park of 80%, an obvious huge difference.  This seems a little out of place so I am going to start to scale my recipes slightly to the more accepted 75% given the change.  This explains a lot because my last few brews seemed a little stiff.

All and all it was a great brew day; fairly uneventful and productive.  I am interested in seeing how this one turns out.  More to come!  Cheers

So tonight I racked over my Dubbel Dribbleto the secondary and while the FG was well in line at 1.012 (should have shot for 1.018m but oh well), the color looked a little light.  Not only is this a style issue, it’s also an issue with the grain and Belgian Candi Sugar I used.  It was supposed to be 275 SRM and should have brought the whole brew to a 17 to 20 range.  Instead it looks like I am at the lower end of the 14 to 17 range.

It’s kind of crazy to me because Beer Smith gave me a pretty high reading based on the ingredients, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Any thoughts on this?

So, while Nick and Bryan were both pre-occupied, I was on my own for a brew day so I decided to do a brew that was not as conducive to the volume brews we had been doing.  Since I hadn’t made a Belgian Dubbel since the Abbey I brewed in extract many years ago, I decided to take this brew to the next level and brew one (as close as possible to the original) in all-grain.

Here is the recipe:

6 gallons – 90min boil 60% efficiency

Grain bill

• 16lbs UK 2 Row Pale Malt (3SRM)
• 1lb Cara-Pils/Dex (2SRM)
• 1lb light Munich (6SRM)
• 1/2lb Victory (25 SRM)
• 1lb Dark Belgian Candi Sugar (275 SRM)
• 2oz Fuggles (4%) 55min
• 1oz Saaz (4%) 5min
• Belgian Witbier Wyeast # 3944

I struck this brew at 7:48am on Sunday morning and was cleaned up before the 12:10pm SU tip off (Go Orange!!!).  A quick overview of the steps are as follows:

1. Strike 4.6 gal at 164f – Step temp 150f – Hold for 1hr 15min
2. Mashout 1.6 gal at near boiling to achieve 168 – Fell short, only 164 (Meatball was wandering around and found a couple of boxers he had beef with, left the mashtun open and it was cold out)
3. Prepared 4.6 gal for two equal rounds of batch sparges
4. First runnings 21 brix, second 14 brix, final running were 10 brix
5. Preboil OG (without candi sugar) was 1.059

There was a 90 min boil for flavor and character.  It worked out well because at 60% efficiency I expected 1.072 OG after the boil and was pleasantly surprised with 1.080.

It is amazing how much faster a 6 gallon batch is than a 20 gallon batch.  Water temps come much faster and things are generally a lot more manageable.  It makes for a very relaxing brew day.  Add to that the fact that the ‘Cuse won in convincing fashion and it made for a great Sunday.

 I made a decision about the wit and went with banana extract.  Initially I had visions of using real banana and doing some cool stuff, but with the holidays I was really distracted and just added some extract into the secondary.  I added 1 fl oz of extract to 5 gallons of beer.  The extract was a little pungent in the bottle, but it blended well with the Belgian yeast. 

The name Space Monkey Wit came to me a while back because of the banana in the brew, but last night’s episode of Mythbusters where they busted all the myths about a hoax moon landing sealed the deal.  It’s just about ready to tap, I put one of the bottles in the fridge so I think I am going to give it a test run later tonight.

Cheers