Belgian Cuvee Recipe

I used my new brewing pot yesterday for the first time and learned a few things. First, you lose a lot more water through evaporation with a large pot. Next time, I will add at least a half gallon more water to accommodate the loss. I also learned much less monitoring is required with the large pot because it keeps a nice rolling boil without much fear of an overboil.

Here's the grain bill:

6 pounds of Breiss dry golden malt extract
1 pound of caramel malt grain, cracked
2 ounces of Styrian Golding hops
1/2 ounce of dried orange peel. I used orange peels from Clementine oranges and froze them.

5-gallons
Original Gravity = 1.65
ABV goal = 6%
Bitterness - very low

Heat the water to 150 degrees and steep the caramel malt in a grain sack, nylon bag or cheesecloth for 20 minutes. It should color the water a nice amber and give the water a caramel smell. Raise the water to a boil and remove from heat and stir in the malt. Try pour it in as slow as you can to avoid clumping the malt together. Some malt may cling to the bag because of the heat coming off of the boil. You can dip the bag in the water to get the remaining malt off.

Add the first ounce of the hops and stir. For about 55 minutes monitor the boil, stirring occasionally. The boil should have constant bubbles rising to the surface that push a light foam layer around the top, but not an aggressive boil that could cause the liquid to come over the top of the pot.

At 55 minutes add another ounce of hops. At 59 minutes, add the orange peel for one minute, stir and turn off the boil at 60 minutes. I used a wort chiller to lower the temperature to 75 degrees and then transferred the wort to the fermenter, leaving behind much of the hops and orange peel. You could keep the peels in the beer to strengthen the flavor or add more during secondary fermentation.

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.