Brew #22, Belgian Dubbel 2, May 16, 2015

I really liked the Belgian dubbel I brewed for #13, so I decided to make the all grain version of the same kit.  This is a recipe kit from Northern Brewer, but I think I may have bought the ingredients at the local homebrew shop.  This is brewed to the recipe, no modifications.

Recipe
Batch Size Target (Actual): 5 gal (5 gal*)
OG Target (Actual): 1.064 (1.062)
FG Target (Actual) : 1.009 (1.007)
Brew House Efficiency Target (Actual) : 72% (66%)
IBUs: 29
Color: 28.6 SRM
Style: Belgian Dubbel
Recipe Type: All Grain
Boil Time: 60 minutes

Water:
Carbon filtered York water

Grains:
10 lbs US 2-Row
8 oz Crystal 40L
4 oz Belgian Special B
1 lb Dark Candi Sugar @ 15 minutes

Hops:
1oz German Tradition (pellets) @ 60 min.
1 oz Hersbrucker (pellets) @ 10 min.

Other:
1 Whrilfloc Tab @ 15 min.

Yeast:
WLP500 Monastery Ale Yeast

Brewing Notes
5/13/15 - Yeast Starter:
2 Liter yeast starter: 8c of water, 1/2 lb Extra light DME, 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient, boiled 10 minutes and chilled to room temperature. Fermented on a stir plate. Cold crashed and decanted overnight 5/15 into 5/16, then allowed it to come back up to room temp.

5/16/15 - Brew Day:

• Sanitized (star san) my cold side equipment in the big mouth bubbler primary.
• Heated 13.44 quarts of water to 165 F in 8 gallon stainless HLT on outdoor propane burner
• Mashed in in 10 gal Igloo cooler, paddled until everything was well mixed and there were no dough balls.  Mash in temp was 154-156F, so I added 1/2 qt cold water, which got me down to 153-155F
• 60 minute mash rest
• 0 minutes: temperature was 153-155F
• 15 minutes: paddled, temperature was 151-152F
• 30 minutes: paddled, temperature was 151F
• 60 minutes, began vorlauf
• Manual Vorlauf: I run a 2 cup measuring cup full of wort out of the valve and gently pour this on top of the mash.  Then I repeat until I'm satisfied with the clarity.  This takes about 10-15 minutes.
• Ran off and fly sparged with 14.62 quarts of 195F water
• Ran until the mash tun was dry, about 30 minutes
• Brought to boil - 60 minute boil time
• Added:
  1oz German Tradition (pellets) @ 60 min.
  1 Tab Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
  Wort Chiller @ 15 min.
  1 oz Hersbrucker (pellets) @ 10 min.
• Chilled to 76F
• Siphoned to BMB,
• Volume was only 4.25 Gal, so I topped off to 5 with room temperature filtered water. Something must have been wrong with my calculations on this one.
• Took an OG reading of 1.060, corrected to 1.062.
• Pitched yeast starter

5/16 - 5/30/15 - Primary Fermentation:
Siphoned to Secondary on 5/30.  Gravity was 1.009

5/30 - 6/21/15 - Secondary Fermentation

6/21/2015 - Bottling:
This was a bit of a comedy of errors.  I found mold on the outside side of the airlock water and on the top of the lid when I brought the carboy up from the basement.  This was the last time I put uncapped beer in the basement.  Then, we got about half way through bottling and realized "Oh Shit! we forgot the sugar." So I proceeded to pour 7 22oz bottles and 6 12oz bottles back into the bottling bucket, trying to pour as gently as possible down the side of bucket to try to keep the oxygen pickup down.  I don't recommend forgetting the sugar.  Bottled with 4.6oz corn sugar, boiled in 2 cups of water.  Yield was 7 22oz bottles and 37 12oz bottles, FG was 1.007 (7.2% ABV).

??? - First Taste:
No date, no notes. Again. This was good - I really like the WLP500 yeast character.  As I mentioned in #13, I thought the extract version was better - probably due to my poor execution.