With the World Cup fast approaching, I decided to brew a beer inspired by the country I'll be cheering for this year, Belgium. I've chosen to cheer for Belgium merely because they are my favourite beer producing country, which I feel is as good a reason as any. I brewed a Belgian Golden Strong Ale, which is the style of beer that really kick started my love for Belgian beer through the popular beer Delirium Tremens.
Last September I went on the trip of my life thus far, a beer-cation through Heidelberg, Bruges, Brussels, Berlin and Munich. On a travel day between Bruges and Brussels we made a stop in the city of Ghent for a tour of the Huyghe Brewery, where Delirium Tremens is brewed. The tour was in Flemish/Dutch as we joined a large group, but it was wonderful to see the complete facilities where one of my favourite beers is brewed.
When developing a recipe for a Belgian Golden Strong Ale, the focus of the flavours should come through from the esters and phenols from the Belgian strand of yeast you use. It's also very typical to use spices in the beer and to ensure the beer finishes dry, thin and refreshing sugar is used in addition to the malt bill. For my recipe I've used Pilsner Malt as the base malt and I made my own Belgian Candi sugar from scratch, which is substantially cheaper than purchasing from a homebrew shop. 2 pounds of hard candi sugar will set you back ~$12, I made mine for $2.50. I also used coriander seeds to provide a subtle citrus flavour.
Making your own Belgian Candi sugar is so easy that it's really hard to justify paying the prices at the homebrew shops, plus you can control the flavour and colour profile. You could skip this step and use plain table sugar in it's original state (sucrose), but the yeast will have to work harder to breakdown sucrose into it's fermentable states, glucose and fructose. As a brewer, I'd prefer the yeast to focus on the more important task at hand... fermenting my beer! Belgian Candi sugar is simply sucrose inverted to glucose and fructose. The steps are very simple, 2 pounds of table sugar with just enough water to create a thick syrup and a 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid (I used cream of tartar). Bring the mixture up to 260
°F and keep it below 275°F for at least 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the sugar will be completely inverted, then you continue at the same temperature until you get your desired colour, I was aiming for a light amber. Once you've achieved your colour target, increase the temperature to 300°F and immediately remove and pour over a cooking sheet with parchment paper to cool. Once cool, sprinkle with icing sugar to prevent the chucks from sticking together and crack with a hammer. Voila, homemade Belgian Candi sugar.
I've been trying to do at least one new technique with each new brew, this time I wanted to try to do my first multi-rest infusion for my mash. With my mash tun being quite small (5 gallons), it's difficult to do more than 2 temperature infusions, so I decided to "Dough-In" at 104
°F and do the Starch Conversion/Saccharification Rest at 150°F. I've been struggling to get a good mash efficiency, so my hope was that starting the mash at 104°F for 30 minutes would allow the enzymes to be distributed and improve my yield. I chose to use the temperature of 150°F for the 60 minutes during the rest of the mash. When you mash between 140°F - 150°F it typically produces a lighter bodied more attenuate beer. With 150°F being at the higher end of the range, I'm hoping to maintain some of the residual sweetness as well.
In order to achieve those mash temperatures, I had to work through some mathematical equations to determine the amount and temperature of the water that needed to be added for the two infusions. Rather than bore you, I'll just mention that I managed to hold the first rest at 104°F for 30 minutes and the second rest started at 152°F and dropped to 145°F by the end of the full 90 minutes. Following the mash, I separated the wort into the brew pot, added the sparge water (168°F) to rinse the rest of the sugars from the grains and collected 6 gallons of wort in the brew pot. By adding an extra step in my mash schedule, I ended up with an efficiency of 18, which is my worst yet. This is disappointing as I likely won't end up with an ABV above 8%. In hindsight I remember noticing that not all of the grains were well milled, perhaps hindering the conversion and hurting my efficiency. Something to watch more closely for next time.
For this recipe, as with my previous Saison recipe, I did a 90 minute boil. Pilsner malt is more likely to provide the off flavour DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide) in the final product, which has the aroma of creamed corn. DMS is present to some degree in every beer, but it's not desirable in lighter bodied ales and lagers. You can reduce the level of DMS in the beer by increasing the boil time. During the boil, I added hops at the 90 minute and 15 minute marks of the boil. At the 90 minute mark I added 2 ounces of Styrian Golding hops to balance out the sweetness of the wort. At the 15 minute mark I added 1 ounce of Czech Saaz, which will provide very subtle herbal, tea and grassy notes. I also added the Belgian Candi sugar at the 15 minute mark and stirred continuously to prevent it from burning on the bottom of the pot. With 5 minutes left, I added 0.5 ounces of coriander seeds (crushed with a pestle and mortar) to add some citrus flavours.
Once the boil was complete, I cooled the wort, strained it into the fermenter and added the Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale Yeast. I took a sample to measure the original gravity and as I suspected from my poor mash efficiency, it was 1.066, a few points lower than the gravity I was targeting. If anything I would have preferred for the original gravity to be a few points higher than the target, as I'd rather an ABV closer to 9%, instead of below 8%. It could still end up above 8%, but the final gravity will have to finish below 1.008, which may result in the body being too light. In 3 weeks I'll transfer the beer to the secondary carboy for 1 more week of conditioning prior to bottling.
Thanks for reading!
