Belgian Dark Strong Ale

[Reedy]

Wondering if anyone has tried making the Rad Abbott recipe from the Coopers website & if so, what you thought of it.

I'm going to give it a go, but thought I might experiment with some Dark Candi sugar & possibly a liquid yeast, neither of which I have tried before.

Would love some feedback, especially with regard to the amount of candi sugar (and whether it should be substituted for some of the other fermentables or just added to the coopers recipe).

 

[eMPTy]

I gave it a go with 2 packs of safbrew T58 for the yeast. Not bad, but a bit young in the bottle still to give a real good impression probably.

If adding Candi I would just add in addition myself. If you were to remove something, I would substitute it for the dextrose. There are people with plenty more experience using it than me though who hopefully can chip in more on quantity. Last dark strong ale i did (before this recipe) I used about 500g of D2 candi

 

[Reedy]

Cheers eMPTy, was leaning towards just adding the candi sugar to the existing recipe & 500gm is about what I was thinking.

You mention yours are still a bit young, how long have they been in bottles for?

 

[eMPTy]

Cheers eMPTy, was leaning towards just adding the candi sugar to the existing recipe & 500gm is about what I was thinking.

You mention yours are still a bit young, how long have they been in bottles for?

Longer than I'd thought actually. Bottled end of June.

Dark as it is though i'm expecting it will only improve for some time to come.

 

[mongey]

I havent done the rad abbot , have been thinking about doing it , but 4 months or so ago I did a simliarish recpeie from ESB for a strong belgian with candi suger

• 1 x ESB 1.7kg Draught
• 1 x No22 Amber Blend
• 1 x Dextrose 1kg
• 1 x Dried Light Malt 1kg
• 1 x 12g Syrian Goldings finishing hop
• 1 x 12g Saaz finishing hop
• 1 x Amber Grain Enhancer 200g
• 1 x Dark Candi Sugar 500g
• 1 x Safbrew T-58 yeast

It came out ok . started higher OG than expected ont he website and I shoudlve pitched 2 packs yeast . it came out on the sweet side even for a dubbel style . not undrinkable sweet just a touch more than I'd like.

 

[Reedy]

So finally got around to doing the Belgian Dark Strong Ale today.

1.7kg Coopers Pale Ale
1.5kg TC amber malt
1kg light dry malt
1kg dextrose
500gm dark candi syrup
100gm chocolate malt
20gm coriander seeds
Abbaye yeast (plus yeast nutrient)

OG 1.083, expecting FG 1.018 (based on Ianh's spreadsheet).

Smells fantastic, looking forward to getting this into bottles for next winter.

 

[Reedy]

After 2 weeks in FV, SG has now been stable at 1.011 for 3 days.

Wondering whether there would be any benefit to leaving it on the yeast for another week or so, or whether I should just bottle it now as I will be leaving these to condition for at least 6 months.

 

[Adam Howard]

Provided there's no obvious off aromas or flavours bottle now. In my own experience the longer you keep Belgian yeast in a high alcohol environment before you get it to do it's second job of carbonating the worse off you'll be. I left my last Belg Dark Strong in the fermentor for 3 weeks and it's still not fully carbed even though I bottled in April. It is carbonating though.