Dubbel is half good

My Belgian dubbel turned out kind of weird. The smack pack yeast didn't work and after two days I had to pitch a different yeast - a Nottingham English ale yeast. It fermented but I didn't know at the time that the bell on the bubbler had a crack in it, likely allowing oxygen and bacteria into the car boy. I bottled the beer and after two weeks began trying the beer. In a 22-ounce bottle, the first pour off the beer is solid. It has a nice Amber color and the yeast made it a bit fruity, with definite banana smell and flavor. It's not what I planned, but not bad. Then comes the second-half of the bottle. It's a yeasty cloud. The beer is alright, but there is so much yeast sludge in suspension that it is almost undrinkable. I didn't do secondary fermentation with this batch, and that was a big mistake.

This beer isn't a total loss, but I likely won't be drinking the whole bottle on these bad boys. Today, I am transferring my Cuvee into the secondary fermenter. I am hoping to prevent a screw up like the one that nearly ruined this dubbel.

Belgian Dubbel

A few weeks ago I purchased the Belgian Dubbel extract kit from Northern Brewer. The high-gravity, caramel-colored beer featured a new adjunct I hadn't used before. The extra sugar came in the form of candy sugar from sugar beats in 1 cm square rough blocks. The sugar adds some sweetness to the beer and also to the alcohol content. Brewing was fairly straightforward. There were caramel malt grains to steep for 20 minutes at 155-160 degrees Fahrenheit. I poured heated water over the sack holding the grains after the 20 minutes to get the rest of the good stuff out.


The wort was about 2.5 gallons and it took 15 minutes or more to heat it to a boil. I took the wort off the flame and poured in two 3.5-pound liquid malt extract jugs and a 1-pound Briess light dry malt extract. I was careful to not go too fast on either of these, stirring along the way. I also used some of the hot water in the wort to help get residual malt out of the extract bottles. These look a lot like miniature milk jugs.

The hops were Czech Saaz for bittering, added at the start, and Sterling Golding for the finishing in the last minute of the 60 minute boil. I combined the hot liquor with cold water in the fermenting bucket, separating most of the hops out through a fine wire strainer. Then I used a wort chiller to get the wort down to 70 degrees. I pitched a ``smack pack'' Wyeast Belgian yeast pack. Bad news - two days later - no action. It was either dead or I screwed up somehow. I had some extra Nottingham yeast from a Porter I had to throw out mid boil because I had to go to the hospital - another tale - and pitched that. Who knows what it will taste like.


I'm not really religious about measuring the gravity of beer, so I don't know what it's specs are, but it's definitely going to pack a wallop with all the sugar I put in there.