Brew a Belgian Tripel - Straffe Hendrik Tripel Clone: Attempt 1
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- čas přidán 3. 12. 2023
- Straffe Hendrik is a fantatic Belgian Tripel. Unusually for a Tripel, it has more notes of caramel and malt than most.
How to brew a tripel.
This is my first attempt at designing a clone recipe for this beer. I include the full details on how to brew this classic Belgian Tripel. (At least my version)
It's a very complex recipe that uses 6 different malts and a good dose of sugar. This is unusually complex for a tripel, so there are a lot of variables to change.
Saaz and Styrian Goldings hops finish off with fruity notes.
#fermentation #braumeister #fermenting #homebrew #homebrewing #speidel #beer #ssbrewtech #keg #ale #brew #recipe #whitelabs #wlp530 - Jak na to + styl
Interesting stuff mate, thanks for sharing
Cool video - like the detailed tasting comparison - looking forward to seeing the results for attempt 2
Thanks s lot Alan,
I'm looking forward to it as well 🍻 🍻
Excellent analysis and comparison, really informative! You came amazingly close for a first attempt
Cheers. I'm looking forward to the second attempt, but with six malts to juggle, I'm worried I could end up further away, rather that closer. Time will tell.
cool video thanks!
That is a big beer to replicate without a recipe I applaud you for giving it a go and getting so close. Impressive tasting notes love it straffe is a great brew cheers 👍🍻
It was an absolute minefield to put together 6 malts in order to come out with a very specific taste profile. I'm now worried if I change something, that I'll end up farther away than I started. But then, that's the fun I guess. 👍
Great video, it was really entertaining and interesting to see how you came up with the recipe, and seeing the tasting results. Thanks for the video!
I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for taking the time to let me know.
Well done mate, I will give this recipe a go.
Cheers for that, and good luck with your brew.
I've just bottled the second attempt at this with a slightly modified recipe. Still waiting for it to condition properly, but I should be able to get a comparison soon.
This original recipe is great tho, and I hope you'll like it.
Good job! I used your grainbill fermenting with harvested MJ M41. It finished .998 with 9.7% abv. The beer was great. I will only try other yeasts. The recipe will not be changed. Thank you for your work!
That's really nice to hear. Thanks for letting me know.
Wow .998, that M41 is incredible on attenuation huh? That's closer to the sort of attenuation I was looking for with the WLP 530, but didn't achieve. I've had to up the sugar a great deal on version 2 to get the alcohol up where it should be. 🍺🍺
Beer looks great. I am a big fan of 3-4% Aromatic Malt to give a boost to the grain complexity, but a bit of darker Munich Malt sounds like a good option also.
I did toy with using aromatic malt, as I agree , it would work to give that darker complexity I'm needing. Plus, I've got loads of it sitting around here...
However, any time I've used it in the past, (and I used it a lot) I've had an almost undefinable, slightly fruity taste come through in the finished product. It's a taste I'm obviously sensitive to, as no-one else picks up on it.
It bothers me enough that I've shied away from it, and just don't use it any more. So dark munich I guess it is....
Thank you very much for a great video!
Any hope for attempt 2?
Thankyou, I appreciate that.
As it so happens, I just bottled attempt 2 a few days ago.
As you can imagine, these strong beers are a bit raw on alcohol at first, so it's too early to tell if I got closer or further away this time.
I'll definitely put up a video when it's conditioned/aged properly.... then the endless editing.... so probably a video in a couple of months. 🍺
I’ll try and brew that one! Tried the Straffe Hendrik at De haalve maan in Brugges a year and half ago and just started brewing myself.
This recipe is quite similar, but heavier than De Halve Maan's. I'm yet to try version 2, but as a small improvement I'd say to increase the sugar a bit, and that will help get closer to the original.
Good luck with it, and thanks for tuning in...
@@brewandbuild Thank you for sharing the recipie!
Great video, nice job on the beer!
Would you consider bottle conditioning this beer in the future? In my opinion Tripels really benefit from some aging time and the fine carbonation you get from bottle conditioning. I usually hate bottling but I make an exception in this case, because a Tripel on tap might be lethal.
You're right there, a tripel on tap would be very messy...
I was 50/50 on bottle conditioning this one, if I'm honest, and I'm thinking seriously about doing it for the next attempt. I generally do it for my Doubles, so should probably follow suit on this. I do like force carbing for the accuracy, and I quite like being able to empty a bottle with no risk of sediment. 🤷
Totally agree with you on the benefits of bottle conditioning tho, and having done a side by side comparison on a couple of my beers, there is a definite taste benefit as well.
Challenge, I'm still dreaming about a clone of my favorite beer Straffe Hendrik Quarupel. Stronger taste than st bernardus 12.
The Straffe Quad is my wife's favorite quad. It's certainly among my top handful. (We have a bottle here now in fact...)
It's on the cards to try to clone it, but my list of beers that need doing is long, and time seems to be short. I will do it at some point, but if you attempt it first, let me know how it goes.
@@brewandbuild I'm going to try making candy syrup from scratch. So I'm going to make a simple quadruple with pilsner malt, decoction mash and maybe Special B🤷🏻♂️
To clone Straffe, I think I have to make the candy syrup extra dark or add 1-2% burnt malt? I don't think I should add more special malt than special B so I can perfect the candy syrup?
That sounds like a good start to it. I haven't started dissecting this beer for a recipe yet, but I think Special B needs a place, and Dark Candi sugar yes, although, I do wonder if this could be done with white sugar coupled with dark crystal and some chocolate malt....?? I am a big fan of candi sugar, so hmm, that's one I'll ponder on....
I think it will need some munich in there as well, otherwise it may not be dark or malty enough, that should also help to support some body, which the sugar will strip out.
Do you sparge or is your mash water the full volume? Otherwise, thanks for the video and analysis of the results. Cheers.
Thanks for that.
I use full boil volume in my mash. I used to sparge, but the Braumeister is quite limited on how much water you can leave out, and hence sparge with, so the efficiency results were not enough to justify the extra time.
Great video! I'm definitely going to give this recipe a try. I have a couple of questions though. Why didn't you do the primary fermentation in the conical fermenter? Did you ferment the beer in a temperature controlled environment? I'm curious at what temperature the yeast was pitched and at what temperature(s) the beer was fermented. Can you elaborate a bit on this please? Thanks.
Thankyou for that.
I get asked occasionally why I'm not fermenting in the unitanks. I brew quite a lot of lagers, so I try to keep the tanks free for those.
Anything I can ferment that just needs to be kept warm rather than cool, I do in the Speidel fermentors. These fermentors sit on a heat mat controlled by a temperature sensor, and they are fully wrapped up in insulation and towels. I can generally comfortably control the fermentation to a half a degree this way.
The yeast was pitched at 18.5°c and then brought to 19°c to start fermentation. This was allowed to free rise to 21.5°c over a few days, and held at that temperature until fermentation was complete. (approx 2 weeks, but left for nearly three weeks just to make sure it was finished)
If you are going to follow this recipe and are looking for it to finish in the tripel range for alcohol, I'd up the sugar to more like 1kg or probably even 1.1 kg. This would bring the abv up and help to dry it out a little more. It's really nice as I've brewed it, but I think it would be even better being a touch stronger.
Good luck brewing 🍺🍺
@@brewandbuild One thing I can't wrap my head around is the calculation of the OG/FG for this receipe in combination with the WLP530 yeast. I have measured the FG of a bottle of Strafe Hendrik Tripel to be 1.011. Taking into account the attenuation of the WLP530 yeast to be between 75-80% it's not possible to get this 1.011 ánd have a ABV of 9%. I calculate the FG to be around 1.018 when I target on an OG of 1.078 but then the ABV is around 8%. My conclusion is that the yeast must have a better attenuation than what's specified by WhiteLabs. So I'll definitely take extra time to prepare a proper yeast starter.
Yes on all of that.
This has been part of the problem with this beer for me from the beginning. I could not get the numbers to work in Beersmith, and just had to take a bit of a leap of faith in going ahead with the recipe.
I've ended up with about 84% attenuation on this brew, which is obviously way outside WhiteLabs numbers.
What could account for it? Possibly the high percentage of white sugar? Their numbers might be based on malt sugars, and the ease of fermenting sucrose may be skewing the attenuation figures. (The fact that the sugar was added to the early boil in an acidic environment may have inverted the sucrose, and the glucose/fructose would be even more fermentable)
My starter was 2 litres plus. Definitely required for this strength of beer....
Another change I may make for version 2, is to lower my mash temperature. I might bring my first mash step down to 65°c, that should help raise attenuation a little as well.
@@brewandbuild Thanks for your prompt reply. Yeah. The white sugar helps for sure. I have increased the amount of sugar to approx. 21% of the grain bill. I was thinking of doing the beta amylase at 62°c just to get maximum fermentable sugar. And for the yeast I'm considering a 2 stage starter.
My latest version of the next attempt is still in working and getting tweaked regularly with each tasting of the first batch. However, my sugar on the next one is at 21% as well, so I think we're going down similar paths at the moment.
It will be good to hear how 62°c goes.