Gulden Draak in a GF

[aamcle]

I've been looking for a way to brew the beer but the grain bill would force low efficiency in my GF.

But I have a cunning plan :-

Calculations.

The recipe is for 5 US Gal and has an OG of 1.096 this includes 3lb of Candy Syrup.

The contribution of the syrup in 5gal is 1.019 (Brewers Friend calculator) therefore the grain contributed (at 75% mash efficiency) 1.096-1.019 = 1.077 units.

Boil off over 90mins should be 0.6 US Gal therefore the preboil gravity should be 1.068 (5/5.6*77).

Procedure.

Mash but lift the malt pipe without sparging, add water to bring the Gravity to 1.068, recalculate the hop additions to match the volume of wort actually achieved. This will be less than 5 US Gallons.

Brew as normal.

Does this sound reasonable?


Thanks All.


aamcle

 

[MHB]

Can you put up your recipe, unfortunately there are lots of very dodgy ones out there.
Gulden Draak only has three malts, just under 30IBU's and they use a wine yeast to finish it off (I have had a fair amount of success with EC1118).
To help work out how much you can make on your Grain Father (I don't know them well). How much malt can you put in them, what sort of efficiency do you really get, I'd be horrified if my mash efficiency 75%, pretty pissed off if my overall efficiency was that low, but for any brewing calculation what you are really getting is most important.
You will have a lot more luck manipulating your information if you work in metric!
Mark

 

[aamcle]

The grain bill is about 7.5 Kg the GF will take that amount but the efficiency is probably going to be in the 60's and I need 75%.

I'm told that Candi Syrup Inc recipes are reliable, my only real concern is the efficiency, GF's are best at 4 - 5 % ABV .

I believe it's the ratio of sparge to mash water (it's the same ratio for a small or large batch) leaves too little sparge water to thoroughly wash out the grain.

I don't want to sparge with extra volume and boil longer, I'm happy to reduce the batch volume a little after all Draak I is a 10% beer.

Atb. Aamcle

 

[Sidney Harbour-Bridge]

Can you put up your recipe, unfortunately there are lots of very dodgy ones out there.
Gulden Draak only has three malts, just under 30IBU's and they use a wine yeast to finish it off (I have had a fair amount of success with EC1118).
To help work out how much you can make on your Grain Father (I don't know them well). How much malt can you put in them, what sort of efficiency do you really get, I'd be horrified if my mash efficiency 75%, pretty pissed off if my overall efficiency was that low, but for any brewing calculation what you are really getting is most important.
You will have a lot more luck manipulating your information if you work in metric!
Mark

Hi Mark

I'd like to have a crack at brewing this, I had the pleasure of drinking the Gulden Draak for the first time last week at a tasting with the brewer dialing in from Belgium to talk about his beers. He didn't say specifically which malts were in it but did say there was caramel for colour, wheat in it for head retention and I got the impression that the only sugar added was for carbonation, he did say they used a wine yeast with a conditioning yeast in the bottle so the beer ages like a wine.

I'd presume the base malt is Belgian pilsner, given the brewers comment about wheat I would guess at 5% wheat malt and then a caramel malt, possibly not a really dark one and lots of it, 20% 45 L caramel would be needed to give it the right sort of colour, does that seem right to you?

Then there's the mash, Belgian beers are deceptively light in mouthfeel due to their high attenuation so I'd be mashing at 65 C to make it as fermentable as possible, does that seem right?

I'm trying to work out a recipe/plan for this, would you share what you do?

 

[MHB]

I still haven’t found a convincing recipe for GD, the one for GD9000 linked in the post above is excellent and is probably a good place to start.

Describing it as a dark Triple is close to the money. One thing that home brewers forget is that breweries have access to malts we home brewers can’t get. Classic case being Fullers ESB, recipe says two malts, but you won’t get the colour and flavour with any of the base malt crystal combinations on the market. Fullers are big enough to specify a crystal made just the way they want it, you could do the same here, last time I checked Joe White would make you a batch to spec, provided you ordered 1.3 Tons. So there is a fair chance you will need two malts to get the colour and flavour you want.
The plum pudding note in GD always makes me think of Carra Aroma which is the darkest crystal malt readily available. The brewery describes it as a "dark red triple" so that sort of stacks up.
Special B and Abby malt could be handy for fine tuning the flavour/aroma.
Best base malt would probably be a good German Pilsner unless you can get any Belgian Pilsner which is getting hard to find.
Wheat sure, somewhere around 10% is a pretty typical head building addition, a high alcohol beer will always have more problems holding a head than a lower alcohol beer so at least 10% wheat, perhaps 15%.
Looking at the apparent attenuation, its up over 85%, odds on you will need some sugar, the GD9000 recipe above is using 15%. Makes sense, so would adding the sugar half way through the ferment (Belgian brewers aren’t allowed to but we can) to take some of the stress of the yeast. Believe me these big 10% plus beers are a real exercise in yeast management.

The mash regieme given above is pretty sensiable tho the 30 minute rest at 67oC is probably a little warmer than I would choose. you are really looking for high attenuation so 63-64oC might be better. This is a beer that would reward a long slow step mash. Efficiency wont be all that flash, I wouldnt be expecting much over 75%. Fair chance you will need to brew a smaller batch to get the gravity, its twice the gravity of most beers so getting half as much isnt really a surprise.

Love to know how this one goes, I think keeping it simple and using lots of yeast would be a good starting point, expect to brew it a couple of times to get it where you want. I wouldnt spend a bomb on Candi sugar, stick with household white and get your colour from malt. That will save some money you can spend on yeast.
Mark

 

[Sidney Harbour-Bridge]

Thanks Mark, so far I've got

Expected stats
Original Gravity: 1.095
Final Gravity: 1.017
ABV (standard): 10.28%
IBU (tinseth): 28.48

Grist
6 kg - Pilsner Malt (70.2%)
550 g - Light Crystal Malt (6.4%)
1000 g - Pale Wheat (11.7%)
550 g - CaraAroma (6.4%)
450 g - Belgian Candi Syrup - D-45 (5.3%) late addition into fermenter

Mash
Mash in 20L @ 59 rest @54 15 minutes
Raise to 62 rest 60 minutes
Raise to 72 rest 30 minutes
Raise to 77 rest 15 minutes
Sparge 19 L at 79, pH4.4

Boil 90 mins

Hops
FWH Magnum, 22IBU
20 mins Syrian Golding 5 IBU

YEAST: White Labs - Belgian Bastogne Ale Yeast WLP510

Ferment at 22 C, cold crash for a week

Bulk prime 325g Candy Syrup + F2 conditioning yeast +wine yeast and bottle

Bulk priming sugar addition should take the ABV up to 10.8

I'm not sure about the 20 min hop addition as I didn't get a lot of hop flavor in the beer when I tried it

I've gone with 80% apparent attenuation but expect a little more, I have had 82% with other Belgian yeasts using this mash schedule

What do you think?

 

[BKBrews]

Thanks Mark, so far I've got

Expected stats
Original Gravity: 1.095
Final Gravity: 1.017
ABV (standard): 10.28%
IBU (tinseth): 28.48

Grist
6 kg - Pilsner Malt (70.2%)
550 g - Light Crystal Malt (6.4%)
1000 g - Pale Wheat (11.7%)
550 g - CaraAroma (6.4%)
450 g - Belgian Candi Syrup - D-45 (5.3%) late addition into fermenter

Mash
Mash in 20L @ 59 rest @54 15 minutes
Raise to 62 rest 60 minutes
Raise to 72 rest 30 minutes
Raise to 77 rest 15 minutes
Sparge 19 L at 79, pH4.4

Boil 90 mins

Hops
FWH Magnum, 22IBU
20 mins Syrian Golding 5 IBU

YEAST: White Labs - Belgian Bastogne Ale Yeast WLP510

Ferment at 22 C, cold crash for a week

Bulk prime 325g Candy Syrup + F2 conditioning yeast +wine yeast and bottle

Bulk priming sugar addition should take the ABV up to 10.8

I'm not sure about the 20 min hop addition as I didn't get a lot of hop flavor in the beer when I tried it

I've gone with 80% apparent attenuation but expect a little more, I have had 82% with other Belgian yeasts using this mash schedule

What do you think?

What bh efficiency/batch size have you used to come up with that? I would think you'll be lucky to get 65% bh efficiency on a 23L batch with 8.55kg of grain.

 

[Sidney Harbour-Bridge]

What bh efficiency/batch size have you used to come up with that? I would think you'll be lucky to get 65% bh efficiency on a 23L batch with 8.55kg of grain.

It's for 20 L in the fermenter but I will probably get more than 80% extract efficiency, saying that I will probably only make 10 L as it's experimental