Batch 089: Pear-Bourbon Tripel (and) Ninth-Place Trophy IPA

Batch 089A is the beer we might have brewed for our holiday brew for friends and family if we hadn't been moving during the time when the beer would have needed to be fermenting in order to be ready for the holidays. Oh well: I'm going to make it anyway. The intent is to make a standard tripel with additional spice and pear flavors, so I'm going to add pears in primary, then spices and more pears in secondary. The basic recipe is based on a triple recipe kindly shared with me by Noah Bolin at local homebrew store CO-Brew Denver. Adaptations (and any bad ideas) are solely my responsibility.

Noah also suggested that the grain bill here would be worth sparging a second time (a parti-gyle mash) to make a second runnings beer, and after pondering this for the few days between buying the grain and brew day, I decided to improvise an IPA around the grain bill. That batch is based roughly on this post.

This was my first parti-gyle mash process, and that wound up being waaaaaaaaay more work than anticipated. I think I could do it with less work on another go, though. I'm still getting used to brewing in this apartment's tiny kitchen.

BeerXML for these recipes, generated by BrewTarget:

• batch 089A: Pear-Bourbon Tripel
• batch 089B: Ninth-Place Trophy IPA

I'm calling these batches Pear-Bourbon Tripel and Ninth-Place Trophy IPA.

Ingredients in this batch

Grain bill for both batches

• 10.50 lb. Briess - Pilsen Malt
• 14 oz. Aromatic Malt
• 8 oz. White Wheat Malt
• 5 oz. Biscuit Malt

First runnings went to batch 089A, second runnings went to batch 089B.

So this Belgian-style tripel, batch 089A, just got pears and bourbon oak chips.

A post shared by Patrick Mooney (@patrickbrianmooney) on Jan 3, 2018 at 6:35pm PST

Additional ingredients for batch 089A, Pear-Bourbon Tripel

• 2.00 lb. Candi Sugar, Clear
• 0.80 oz. Tettnang hops (3.7% A.A.) at 60 min.
• 1.20 oz. Tettnang hops (3.7% A.A.) at 30 min.
• 0.30 oz. Saaz (Czech Republic) hops (3.0% A.A.) at 20 min.
• 0.70 oz. Saaz (Czech Republic) hops (3.0% A.A.) at 10 min.
• 0.30 oz. Australian Summer hops (5.1% A.A.) at 60 min.
• 2 vials Inland Island INIS-222 (Belgian Gnome Ale) yeast
• 3 lbs, 2.5 oz. (post-prep. weight) Seckel pears, overripe, cored and sliced, frozen on 2 Jan 2018, added frozen to fermenting beer on 3 January.
• 2 oz. (pre-soaking weight) / 3.65 oz. (post-soaking weight) medium-toast French oak cubes, soaked in miscellaneous bourbons for six weeks, added to the beer on 3 January 2018.
• 4 lbs., 1.2 oz. (pre-prep weight) red D'Anjou pears, not quite ripe, cored and sliced, frozen on 22 January, added to the beer on 23 January.
• 4.25 oz. maltodextrin, boiled for ten minutes in approx. 2 qt. fermented beer, which was then re-added to the fermentation vessel on 25 February.
• 8.0 oz. (post-prep weight) red pears, not quite ripe, cored and sliced, frozen on 3 April, added to the beer on 5 April.
• 1 lb., 9.1 oz. (post-prep weight) green D'Anjou pears, just past ripe, cored and sliced, frozen on 3 April, added to the beer on 5 April.
• 3.33  lb frozen-from-fresh (post-slicing-and-cleaning-weight) D'anjou pears, added on 17 May.
• 1  packet Lalvin K1V-1116 wine yeast, rehydrated in ½ cup untreated Denver tap water at approx. 100℉ for 15 minutes, added on 17 May.
• 1 lb. maltodextrin, boiled in approx. 1 gal. of fermented beer for ten minutes, then added back into the carboy on 17 May.
• 1 qt. R.W. Knudsen organic pear juice, used as priming sugar on 8 July 2018.
• Approx. 3 fl. oz. actively fermenting solera mead, containing Lalvin K1V-1116 wine yeast, added before bottling to help ensure carbonation.

Additional ingredients for batch 089B, Ninth-Place Trophy IPA

• 2.20 lb. Briess LME - Golden Light
• 1.65 oz. Cascade hops (8.6% A.A.) at 60 min.
• 1.00 oz. Cascade hops (8.6% A.A.) at 15 min.
• 1.00 oz. Cascade hops (8.6% A.A.) at 5 min.
• 1.00 oz. Cascade hops (8.6% A.A.) at 0 min.
• 1 packet White Labs WLP001 (California Ale Yeast)
• A dry-hop addition on 3 Jan 2017, consisting of a brewing sock containing:
  • 1 oz. BSB Nelson Sauvin hops (AA 11.6%)
  • 1 oz. LD Carlson's Mandarina Bavaria hops (AA 7.3%, beta acid 8.5%, cohumulone 15%)
  • 1 oz. Valley Brewers Motueka hops (AA 7.8%)

Observations

• 2017-11-29T11:00: Batch 089A is bubbling very quickly after only twelve hours. There is no visible carbon dioxide production in the carboy for batch 089B yet.
• 2017-11-30T02:11: Batch 089A has already bubbled wort into the airlock. I'm a convert to the Inland Island yeast cult. Replaced the airlock with a blowoff hose. Small amount of bubbling in the airlock for batch 089B.
• 2017-11-30T23:32: Batch 089B is is bubbling regularly.
• 2018-01-02T20:22: Cored and sliced some pears for batch 089A, then put them in the freezer to burst their cell walls.
• 2018-01-03T19:10: Added frozen pears in brewing bags, plus bourbon chips in a brewing bag, to batch 089A. Current gravity: 1.012.
• 2018-01-10: Bottled batch 089B, resulting in just over four and a half gallons of beer at nearly 7%.
• 2018-01-23T18:35: Added frozen pears in hop bags to batch 089A. Current gravity: 1.004.
• 2018-02-25T19:10: Measured gravity of batch 089A: 1.006. Looks like those pears added a little bit of body. Or else it's just measuring variance. Hard to say. Pulled out about a half-gallon of beer and boiled it with unfermentable maltodextrin, then added it back in, in an attempt to add some more body. Did not stir or agitate in any way, in order to avoid oxygenation as much as possible, and so did not take a post-addition hydrometer reading. I'll look in on this in a week or so. It'll be at least that long before we have enough bottles for this, anyway, unless the bottle fairy pays us a visit. But currently, this is rather good: It's just a little too dry to be a satisfactory tripel-style ale. The whiskey barrel chips are integrating nicely, though I'm surprised at one thing: I thought the oak cubes would add oak character more slowly than this. I'm also surprised how little the pears are evident in this, and may wind up adding some pear juice later, though that would probably induce re-fermentation. But, then, that's not necessarily bad, either, as long as I'm willing to let the beer go unbottled for another few weeks. Hmmmm.
• 2018-02-25T23:03: And what about spices for batch 089A? I was thinking earlier of spices.
• 2018-03-29T19:21: Gravity of batch 089A is still only 1.004 after the first maltodextrin addition. Need to add some more maltodextrin, I think. Maybe some more pears, too.
• 2018-05-17T20:28: Gravity of batch 089A is still only 1.005. Removed ~1 gal. and boiled it, gradually adding a pound of maltodextrin as the beer heated. Racked remaining beer off of yeast, pears, and whiskey barrel chips and into a new carboy. Added new frozen-from-fresh pears, then poured the boiled-with-maltodextrin component into the new carboy. Harvested some yeast for later. Pitched rehydrated Lalvin K1V-1116 to ensure that fermentation completes before bottling (and that there's yeast able to carbonate!). Popped in an airlock and filled it with vodka.
• 2018-07-08T19:12: Bottled batch 089A. Since we used over 11 lb. of pears, I want to take a whack at figuring their sugar contribution. Pears are around 10% sugar by weight, so that's a contribution of approximately 1.1 lbs. of sugar if it's all recovered! I'm going to call it one pound even, on the assumption that soaking slices of frozen pear is efficient at sugar recovery, though not 100% efficient. That adds .046 to the gravity of a single gallon, so that's just about .010 added to the four and a half gallons of beer. Treating the 29 grams of sugar in the pear juice as negligle, that means our ABV is a little below 11%!