Few Questions

[hamstringsally]

thinking about giving this recipe a go. its a duvel clone off the data base.

5 kg Weyermann Pilsner
1.5 kg Cane Sugar
64 g Saaz (Czech) (Pellets, 4.0 AA%, 90 mins)
2000 ml White Labs WLP570 - Belgian Golden Ale
1 tablet Whirfloc


my questions are

is whirfloc same as irish moss?

the recipe says to carbonate to 4 volumes? not sure what this means

2000ml of yeast. does this mean i make a starter or do i buy a liquid kit of 2000ml?

cheers

 

[BjornJ]

Hi,
yes Whirlfloc is a similar product to irish moss. Just throw it in the kettle when there is 5-10 mins left of boil time.

2000 ml yeast means you should culture up a 2 litre starter of your yeast. Do a bit of a search, this site has lots of tips on how to culture a starter. you boil water and dried malt extract, cool it down and add your yeast to some of it. Shake the bottle as often as you can and add more and more of the 2 litres of liquid, making your yeast grow.

thanks
Bjorn

forgot: the carbonate to 4 volumes means that when you are to bottle, you will calculate how much dextrose is necessary to include per litre of beer on the bottles to generate 4 volumes of CO2 per volume of beer. 4 is quite a bit, normal pub beer is more around 2.5 I believe.

 

[A3k]

is whirfloc same as irish moss?
Yes, but in a tablet.

the recipe says to carbonate to 4 volumes? not sure what this means
it means how highly carbonated the beer is. Pretty sure that it means that for 1 Litre of beer, 4 litres of CO2 are disolved in it. This is high, but that's how belgians are.

2000ml of yeast. does this mean i make a starter or do i buy a liquid kit of 2000ml?
make a 2litre starter I'd say.

cheers
Al

 

[Franko]

is whirfloc same as irish moss? Yes it is the tablet form

 

[hamstringsally]

thanks heaps for the answers guys,



I bottle atm in the long necks and just use the plastic scoop you get from most homebrew shops and just use white sugar. what would this roughly be in terms of carbination? 2.5?
do you think it would still come out ok using this tool to measure sugar for this recipe?



cheers

 

[hamstringsally]

5 kg Weyermann Pilsner
1.5 kg Cane Sugar
64 g Saaz (Czech) (Pellets, 4.0 AA%, 90 mins)
2000 ml White Labs WLP570 - Belgian Golden Ale
1 tablet Whirfloc


At what stage should I be adding the Cane Sugar?

 

[BjornJ]

Hi,
not sure how much carbonation your sugar measures would give, but probably around 2.5 as that seems to be the standard kind of thing. 4 volumes of CO2 is quite a bit.

If the recipe contains sugar you are generally supposed to add this at the last part of the boil.
There is no need or benefit from boiling the sugar for a long time, you just want it dissolved. Maybe even take of a litre of two of your boiling wort, dissolve/stir in the sugar and pour this back in, just to make sure you don'g get the sugar falling to the bottom and getting stuck there.

thanks
Bjorn

 

[praxis178]

5 kg Weyermann Pilsner
1.5 kg Cane Sugar
64 g Saaz (Czech) (Pellets, 4.0 AA%, 90 mins)
2000 ml White Labs WLP570 - Belgian Golden Ale
1 tablet Whirfloc


At what stage should I be adding the Cane Sugar?

I'd add it either during the boil, or as an invert syrup about three days into the primary, over a day or three. Personally I'd go the invert syrup route, just my $0.02 there.

 

[BjornJ]

I agree with the idea of adding sugars late or in the fermenter rather than the kettle, but only if the recipe is made to do so.

The advantages as far as I understand are that the yeast will have a healthier environment, eating away at the malt sugars for a couple of days before you add the cane sugar rather than dumping the yeast in a very high OG wort straight away. Another benefit of adding the sugar to the fermenter is that you can use beersmith to calcuate how this will change the OG rather than dumping it in the kettle before your initial OG reading.
(and in the kettle you will loose a certain percentage of your sugars in the trub/wort you leave behind in the kettle, but in the fermenter the entire sugar goes into your "payload" volume)

If your recipe does not say to add the sugar in the fermenter, I would assume they are supposed to be added during the boil, rather than later in the fermentation.


thanks
Bjorn

 

[BjornJ]

after a quick search I will change my advice to do as Thomas J says, add it in the fermenter after a couple of days.
Appearantly the high OG of the Belgian beer recipe makes a difference for the yeast.
you will get a better fermentation if adding the sugar later.

see this link for more details about cloning duval: http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=82220

And the advice still stands, you can then get an OG reading of your malt component going into the fermenter.
Then add the sugar to your recipe to see what the OG will be.

thanks
Bjorn

 

[brendanos]

Warning - if you plan to carbonate to 4 volumes, only do it in champagne bottles/orval bottles or similar. Most bottles would risk exploding under that much pressure.

 

[manticle]

If you plan to carbonate to 4 vol, reconsider your plan and switch to 2.7-3.0

4 vol refers to volumes of carbonation/CO2. 4 is quite high and you will need specially thick bottles (like the aforemtnioned champers or orval bottles) and a liking for fizzy beer. Duvel is highly carbonated but until you know what vol means and what you're chasing, I'd settle for a touch less.