Me And The Homebrews: Part 3

Making beer is an ancient and time-honored art; beer provides sustenance for the fast and pleasure for the palette. Me and the Homebrews is a chronicle of a bunch of guys following in the footsteps of the great Abbey Monks and their brews. In their honor, we domestic monks chose a Belgian style Dubbel Ale; this potent brew weighs in at 8% ABV.

• Part 1: The Gathering
• Part 2: Preparation Day
  

A billion cells can't be wrong: Wyeast #1214 Belgian Ale Yeast comes in a "smack pack". Breaking the inner pouch by a decisive smack in the palm released a billion yeast cells into the nutrient bath where they began growing and multiplying. The swelling pack is shown below. Beer brewing is all about the yeast. The liquid Belgian Ale yeast was specially selected for this particular recipe.



Water, water, everywhere: The Homebrews opted to perform a full boil: 5 gallons of un-chlorinated spring water. The selection and quality of the water will have a measurable impact on the final quality of the Ale. The venerable Belgian style Ommegang Dubbel lends inspiration to the process as seen in the lower left corner of the picture.


Malted Grains: Two types of specialty grains are cracked with a rolling pin in preparation for steeping in the brew bath. Caramel malts are an excellent choice for almost any recipe. CaraMunich (57° L) imparts a very subtle, toasted flavor, and Dingemans Special B (147° L) is an extremely dark caramel malt, which combines characteristics of dark caramel and light roasted malt. It has a sharp, almost toffee like flavor.


The specialty malts steeped for 15 minutes in the brew bath; the Homebrews took special care to ensure the temperature did not exceed 170° F. The brew water turned a delicious dark brown tea color.


Good as gold: The assembled fermentables were added one at a time once the brew kettle admixture reached boiling (212° F). This was the longest phase of our brew; it took an hour and a half to reach the boiling point with the full 5 gallons. (Not shown: 1 lb. Belgian Candi Sugar, Czech Saaz hops).


The heat was removed for the ingredient phase. Adding in the dry malt resulted in a foaming action almost immediately. The tall sides of the 8 gallon MegaPot brew kettle successfully contained the precious Ale with no overflow. The brew moderated to a lighter shade of brown.


The boil settled down with the addition of the barley malt. This thick, sweet syrup restored the darker caramel color to the Ale. The Belgian Candi Sugar was also stirred in. By this time we had lost 20 degrees of temperature. The heat was restored and the brew brought back to a boil.


Time for timer: This point marked T-minus 60 minutes for the boil. First in was the German Spalt bittering hops. Go Germans! Hops is an aromatic plant whose pale green leaves lend a bitter character to the beer to balance out the sweetness of the malt. At T-minus 1 minute the Czech Saaz hops was added to lend additional nose to the final product.