Anyone have a good recipe they want to share?
Sounds like keeping it simple might be the way to go. Pilsner malt and sugar?
Yep, that’s it. Don’t be tempted to make it more complicated. I like WY1388 for the style.
How much and what kind of sugar are we talking about? Plain table sugar at 10-15%?
Yep. Even as high as 20%.
FWIW, Roger Protz (don’t know where he got this info) has written that Duvel is brewed with Pilsner malt to a gravity of 1.056, and dextrose brings it to 1.073.
Could be. I’d have to check BLAM to verify.
Clarification: that was from memory. Read it again, he says Pilsner malt to 1.056, dextrose in the kettle to 1.066, the dextrose for priming brings the total to 1.073. (No wonder it’s so fizzy!)
They blend pilsner malts as well.
I recently read this article on the style: Make Your Best Belgian Golden Strong Ale | Craft Beer & Brewing
Thanks all. Seems pretty easy as long as I pitch enough yeast and keep my fermentation temps in check. Hoping for something in the 9% Abv range
High attenuation and carbonation are the hallmarks.
It begs the question… are these really separate styles?
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
I was always told it’s called “strong” because it strongly resembles a triple. And golden rhymes with gordon.
Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. See what you made me do?
Heathens. Tripel is a separate category. Duvel is a separate category. And every Belgian beer you label “golden strong” is a effing separate category. Chouffe, Cuvée Van De Keizer and Dolle Oerbier have nothing in common. Zero, nada, zilch. Except if awesomeness is a category.
Here here! Raise your glass and bow down to the one true Belgian!
I agree. To me the yeast drives the differences. The stats may be the same but no one can say that Westmalle Tripel and Duvel are the same, flavor wise. That’s the problem with trying to categorize a beer country like Belgium. Style descriptors miss the mark a lot of the time.
We do make a distinction between “blond” and tripel. “Blond” beers are beers such as Grimbergen, Leffe and Affligem. They are a bit more phenolic than tripels.
Duvel is really different, as it is brewed with a non-Belgian yeast.
For my beer judge exam I had to be able to blindly determine whether a beer was a tripel, a blond or a Duvel. The problem is that there are also big differences between brands, so many a night was spent in tears and despair as I tried in vain to nail them down.
I think the descriptors for both tripel and golden strong both fit the beers I’ve sampled. Just sayin. Sure there is a lot of variety within the style. A style of beer should NOT mean that every beer should taste the same!
I’m just saying that these two style guidelines are extremely close, and I doubt anyone could meaningfully discern the two.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
One thing I will say is there is a ton more commonality in American versions than the Belgian counterparts. Most American Tripels and Golden Strongs all taste the same. Something like Golden Monkey tastes remarkably similar to Pranqster which is remarkably similar to Allagash Tripel, etc.
Sampling a Westmalle versus a Duvel versus a Chimay versus a Chouffe versus a DT seems, to my taste buds at least, to be a fundamentally different experience. I chalk it up to the more unique yeasts used in the Continental versions of the styles.
From BLAM:
They have soft water with low iron. I tried to find a copy of the Breendonk water profile to attach here but wasn’t successful. Either way, BLAM says they de-min the water and add salts back so water is anyone’s guess.
They blend Pils varieties which I assume is for color purposes, but being that they boil for 90 minutes, it could be just to get the right flavor profile.
As Frank pointed out earlier, their yeast was isolated from McEwans by DeClerck himself.
It’s “Willebroek” in Bru’nwater. But it is known that they use their own source, so not sure whether it would be the same.