This batch is from a Northern Brewer kit that I purchased as part of their IPA Day sale. We're calling this one Belgian Bastard, after a joke in one of the Pythons' less-funny later skits. It's a hoppy black IPA that wound up getting fermented with a Belgian yeast, White Labs' Belgian Saison Yeast III (WLP585).

Ingredients in this batch

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget.

Brew day

Removed dried US-05 yeast from the fridge and left it on the counter. Sanitized, sanitized, sanitized. Heated two gallons of water, soaking the specialty malts in it for twenty minutes as the temperature gradually fell from 160℉ to 140℉. Pulled out and discarded the specialty grains, then cranked up the heat and waited for the boil to begin again. When the water reached full boil, poured in six pounds of malt syrup, stirring it in thoroughly. Tossed in the bittering hops and started the timer.

Monitored the wort, stirring periodically. Tossed in another ounce and a half of hops with twenty minutes to go, then stirred in the remaining malt extract. Put in the aroma hops at 5 minutes, then, at flame-out, chilled the wort with the immersion chiller. Poured a gallon of water from the freezer and a gallon of water from the refrigerator into the fermentation bucket, then poured the wort into the cold water when the wort dropped below 100℉. This brought the temperature of the wort to 78℉, so I aerated the wort by stirring vigorously for five minutes with an enormous spoon, then pitched the yeast, which had been rehydrating for the last twenty minutes.

Popped a lid onto the bucket and fitted a blowoff hose to the lid.

Making a starter

When no carbon dioxide discharge had occurred in two days, took a hydrometer reading and found it unchanged. Sanitized a four-liter carboy and put in a half-pound of mesquite honey, plus yeast nutrients and energizer, and filled the carboy with distilled water to approximately 3.5 liters. Agitated to mix and aerate, then pitched in a packet of White Labs WLP585. This preparation began fermenting within twenty-four hours; three-quarters of it was pitched into this batch (and the rest became the fermenting yeast starter for batch 047) on 6 January 2017.

Brew day: 2 January 2017
Original gravity: 1.067.
Bottling day: 12 February 2017
Final gravity: 1.012
Estimated ABV: 7.5%

Yield:

  • 6 x 500 mL beer bottles
  • 8 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 26 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 hydrometer tube's worth of beer

Total: Approx. 595 fl. oz., or 4⅔ gal.

Observations

  • 2017-01-03T11:17: No carbon dioxide discharge from the bucket.
  • 2017-01-04T13:42: No carbon dioxide discharge from the bucket.
  • 2017-01-05T14:11: Still no carbon dioxide discharge from the bucket, and a hydrometer reading indicates no decrease in gravity, so I began a starter, as described above.
  • 2017-01-06T23:09: Pitched in the starter, as described above.
  • 2017-01-07T23:24: Still no bubbling visible in the carboy.
  • 2017-01-08T13:13: Still no bubbling in the carboy, but there's clearly a nice head of krausen building up in the bucket.
  • 2017-01-13T04:53: Krausen has broken up and is starting to dissolve back into the fermenting wort. Still no visible carbon dioxide discharge from the airlock.
  • 2017-01-18T02:11: Took a sample. Gravity is 1.012.
  • 2017-01-26: Took another sample. Gravity is still 1.012. Racked into new bucket: wanted to re-use the yeast, but don't have any immediately brilliant ideas. It had really compacted nicely down into a firm, stable yeast cake at the bottom of the bucket.
  • 2017-01-31T16:15: Added the dry hops.
  • 2017-02-12T18:20: Bottled, yielding 4⅔ gal. at 7.5% ABV.