FOOLCiRCLE

Yesterday (10.20.07) I brewed a Belgian Tripel style beer. Also, while brewing, I bottled the Small Beer from the second runnings of the Imperial Stout.

Things with the Tripel went well as soon as I got my butt in gear. Per usual I have one time set in my head as the starting time and then one thing leads to another and before you know it I’m starting two to three hours later. I need to be more strict with my time guidelines, or just stopping caring about it so much. Anyway, I finally started around 11PM. To me a Tripel is a simple beer to brew, the trick lies with the yeast and letting them work their magic on the wort you created for them. The recipe I created used only Belgian Pilsner malt and clear sugar mashed at a quite low temperature to create a very fermentable environment for the yeast. I also only used European Noble Hops (Hallertauer and Saaz) and a pure Belgian yeast strain WLP550. The OG was 1.082, and everything felt like it went smoothly. I was finished and cleaned up by 5PM, a nice clean straight forward six hour day.

While the mash was mashing I got things prepped to bottle the Small Beer. I was lucky and Karen was home to give me a hand which usually makes bottling feel smoother. The bottling seemed to go off without consequence. I tasted the beer of course (see picture above) and it was OK. I really don’t know what to expect from this beer so it is hard to be disappointed or really excited at this point. It tastes light in flavor and body, the nose is weak and the appearance is dull as of now. I know, I make it sound very appealing don’t I. So I’m hoping with some carbonation and temperature adjustments it’ll be a nice easy drinking, smooth, session beer (maybe close to a Mild, maybe).

Between brewing and bottling I also did a couple other “beer chores” and cleaned three carboys that were sitting with cleaning solution in them, rearranged some beers in the cellar (which desperately needs some attention), and tried the Amarillo Amber for the first time full on. The carboys were no big deal, just one of those things that need to be done. The attention given to the cellar was actually in preparation to see how many empty 12oz. bottles I would have available after bottling the Small Beer, like less than half a case. I also pulled out a bunch of painted 22oz. bottles I had (think Rogue) and threw them out deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to try and remove the paint to use the bottles, plus I’m not too big on bottling in 22oz. bottles. But in doing so I came up with about a case worth of Belgian-style 750ml. bottles that I put aside to give to Garrett. He likes to bottle-condition some of his Belgian beers in these type of bottles, so they’re all his. And the Amarillo Amber seemed like it’s going to be an easy drinker. The Amarillo hops seemed to have already mellowed some and are leaning toward the orangey-citrus side versus the cat piss type of aroma they can develop sometimes.

By the way, looks like I’m going to need some help drinking some beer soon. I have about two cases of American Brown Ale, two cases of Peached American Brown Ale, four cases of IPA (only very lightly carbonated, but tasty), two cases of Amarillo Amber, and two cases of the Small Beer. On top of that there is the Vader Imperial Stout ready in December, the Linvilla Hard Cider ready in November, and now the Tripel probably ready in December. When are you available?

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.