Making a Dubbel....

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Iain McLean
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Making a Dubbel....

Post by Iain McLean »

This will be my second brew. The first was a great learning curve and tastes great.

This time I'll be using a liquid yeast instead of dried and I'll be making a starter.

The yeast I'll be using is Wyeast 3864 Canadian / Belgian Style. As I'll be making a stronger brew will it serve me to do one starter then pitch that yeast into another starter before pitching it into the main fermenter?

I understand for stronger brews you need more yeast? Will the two starters work fine with 200g LDME in 2l of water each time?
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Bizier
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Re: Making a Dubbel....

Post by Bizier »

Go Iain!

It depends on the gravity of your brew, but that should be plently of yeast for a single batch. Just remember to be absolutely super sanitary with your starters.
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
If you haven't seen it already, that is a good tool for determining what you should be looking at to get the appropriate number of yeast cells per gravity per volume.
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Iain McLean
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Location: Port Melbourne
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Re: Making a Dubbel....

Post by Iain McLean »

The first starter went well, formed a nice lump of yeast, not really a cake - more a pastry...

Just put the second LDME wort onto it and should have a real nice load of yeast ready for the weekend brew day! :D

I have to say, reading the forum and John Palmer's work you form an opinion this stuff is hard. After going to G&G and seeing their open-shop brew day and just getting stuck into it the myth disappears. I'm not saying I'm up there with the experts but I'm wishing I'd started this a long time ago!

Bring on Saturday and the brewing.... thinking of steeping some orange peel in the brew...
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Iain McLean
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Re: Making a Dubbel....

Post by Iain McLean »

Brewed last night...

Making the jump from straightforward brewing into the mysterious world of Belgian beer - I wanted to clone Maudite but as I'm not yet at all-grain levels of sophistication I pulled info form a few sources and opted for the following experiment:

Using a Type 4 fresh wort kit from G&G, the label of which says: "...made with Pilsner malt and with 10% of the gravity being provided by Candi sugar. 25 IBU with bitterness provided by a mild neutral hop and a small late addition of German Hallertau."

I steeped 110g of Belgian Aromatic malts, 110g of crystal malts and 40g of chocolate malts for 25 minutes in filtered water with a touch of calcium added in 2 litres of water.

Then I boiled the wort adding 20g of Tettnang hops for 40 mins, adding a further 10g with 10 mins to go and 10g at flame out. I also tossed in 25g of sweet orange peel.

Poured the wort into the fermenter with the Type 4 and added the yeast from the LDME starter and tonight it's bubbling away like a rocket :D

Seeing as yesterday in 1975 Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here, I brewed 'Wish You Were Here Beer' to the album while enjoying a fine selection of European beers I laid my hands on the day before :wink: .

Here's hoping it's as good as my first beer.
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