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Tropical Dubbel

Tropical Dubbel

Belgian Dubbel • All Grain • 19.50 L

bear2bear

This is an experimental brew. Dubbel must not be hoppy, but I deliberately made this one hoppy to check whether some restrained citrusy note is acceptable for this style or not. The problem I expect is a mismatch with the taste from Candi sugar and that comes from a characteristics of yeast.

September 3, 2014  08:07pm

5.0/5.0 1 rating

Ingredients (All Grain19.50 L)

  • 4.46 kg English 2-row Pils

    English 2-row Pils

    Pilsner base malt.

  • 0.66 kg Munich Malt

    Munich Malt

    Sweet, toasted flavor and aroma. For Oktoberfests and malty styles

  • 0.22 kg Crystal Malt 10°L

    Crystal Malt 10°L

    Sweet, mild caramel flavor and a golden color. Use in light lagers and light ales. Characteristics & Applications: • In contract to Brewers Malt, glassiness is a distinguishing characteristic of Caramel Malt. The glassy endosperm creates the desirable non-fermentable components giving true Caramel Malt the ability to contribute body (mouthfeel), foam foam retention, and extended beer stability, while contributing color and unique caramel flavor. • Caramel 10L is a roasted caramel malt that imparts golden color. • Use 3-7% for Pilsener-style beers for balance. • Use 5-15% to provide color, sweetness and color to light amber beers. • Produced from AMBA/BMBRI recommended 2-Row Malting Barley varieties.

  • 0.22 kg Belgian Special B

    Belgian Special B

  • 0.454 kg Candi Sugar Amber

    Candi Sugar Amber

    Smooth taste, good head retention, sweet aroma and high gravity without being apparent. Use in Belgian and holiday ales. Use clear for tripels, amber for dubbels, and dark is used in brown beer and strong golden ales.

  • 20 g Challenger -7.6 AA% whole; boiled 60 min

    Challenger

    Popular bittering hop used primarily in British ales and lagers. Mild to moderate aroma, but quite spicy.

  • 14 g Amarillo® -8.5 AA% pellets; added dry to secondary fermenter

    Amarillo®

    Grown in Washington. A newer multi-use hop with a nice citrus-flower bouquet and medium-high acid content suited for bittering. Used in American Ales and IPAs.

  • 1tsp Irish Moss -Boil for 15 min. (omitted from calculations)

    Irish Moss

    A dried red-brown marine algae. Fining agent to remove large proteins. Negatively charged polymer attracts positively charged protein-tannin complexes (extracted from grain husks and hops) during the boil. This action is aided by the clumping of proteins in the boiling process. Irish moss settles to the bottom of the brew kettle with spent hops and hot break material at the end of the boil.

  • FermentisS-33Safbrew S-33

    FermentisS-33Safbrew S-33

    A very popular general purpose yeast, displaying both very robust conservation properties and consistent performance. This yeast produces superb flavour profiles and is used for the production of a varied range of top fermented special beers (Belgian type wheat beers, Trappist, etc.). Sedimentation: medium. Final gravity: high. Also recommended for bottle-conditioning of beers. Excellent performance in beers with alcohol contents of up to 7.5% v/v but can ferment up to 11.5% v/v.Pitching instructions: Re-hydrate the dry yeast into yeast cream in a stirred vessel prior to pitching. Sprinkle the dry yeast in 10 times its own weight of sterile water or wort at 27C ± 3C. Once the expected weight of dry yeast is reconstituted into cream by this method (this takes about 15 to 30 minutes), maintain a gentle stirring for another 30 minutes. Then pitch the resultant cream into the fermentation vessel. Alternatively, pitch dry yeast directly in the fermentation vessel providing the temperature of the wort is above 20C. Progressively sprinkle the dry yeast into the wort ensuring the yeast covers all the surface of wort available in order to avoid clumps. Leave for 30 minutes and then mix the wort e.g. using aeration.

Notes

Add 1/12 of Campden powder to each of the mashing water and sparging water. Also add 1 tsp of gypsum to the mashing water. 1 step low temp. mash at 65C for 90 min. with mash-out. Candi sugar used was an old liquid one and I could not use up entirely. 1 tbsp of Brown cane sugar was added to compensate for that. I had only 12g of Challenger hop, so that 8g of Amarillo (alpha 8.6%) was added to compensate the shortage. The yeast used was old (a use before 2011 was recommended on the package) so that 2 packages were used. A vehement fermentation was confirmed at the primary. Use of clear candi sugar instead of amber one make the color within the range of style. The recipe conceived at first used 10g of Magnum instead of 20g of Challenger, but I changed since I had a great desire to use up my old Challenger hop (2008 crop). The amount of Amarillo for dry hop must be adjusted after checking the young beer. Brewed on 9/3/14. OG was 1.082.

Style (BJCP)

Category: 18 -Belgian Strong Ale

Subcategory: B -Belgian Dubbel

Range for this Style
Original Gravity: 1.066 1.062 -1.075
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 1.008 -1.018
Color: 19.3 SRM 10 -17
Alcohol: 7.1% ABV 6% -7.6%
Bitterness: 22.7 IBU 15 -25

Discussion

bear2bear

Success in arrangement

2015-04-06 1:41pm

Racked to the secondary on 11/17/14 and dry-hopped with 14g of Amarillo (pellet). Bottled on 1/5/15. The FG was 1.024. Ya, it is definitely Dubbel and pleasantly hoppy. Very good taste indeed. A hop character is assertive but not intense, and the characteristics of Dubbel is preserved very well. Any low alpha hop without overly earthy and/or spicy character may be used by a restrained amount to accentuate this style.

highwaytoale

IBU

2015-04-11 1:04pm

Hi B2B, I was intrigued by your thought of making a more highly hopped dubbel, but it appears you're still well within the IBU range for the style. The varieties of hops used are different from a traditional dubbel, which is an experiment in itself and I really like the thought of Amarillo flavors mixed with the plum & leather characteristics of the style. Am I missing something else here?

bear2bear

Re: IBU

2015-04-12 6:47am

The idea was to add a moderate citrusy note to Dubbel either by a dry hop or a finishing hop, and I did it by the former. In any case, it does not increase IBU since the hops are not boiled. Amarillo turned out to work nice this time, but so will be other American citrusy hops like Cascade, Columbus, Citra etc. (I am not sure about pine notes like Simcoe. I will avoid it as too risky. )It is crucial to restrain the use of hops to avoid making the beer too hoppy. The citrusy hop character in the beer must be subtle, just enough to be noticeable.

highwaytoale

Re: IBU

2015-04-19 12:33pm

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. I really like the thought of Amarillo in a dubbel and I can see your point about not using citrusy hops. I came across this just as I had brewed a Belgian pale using some New Zealand hops (Pacific Gem and Zythos) because I too thought the "tropical" notes coming from some of these newer varieties of hops would go well with the Belgian esters. I'm still conditioning so I can't comment on my results as of yet, but fingers crossed. Cheers!

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