Recipe thoughts - Belgian Dubbel

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

btrots87

Well-Known Member
Joined
1/1/15
Messages
162
Reaction score
71
Location
Central Coast
I'm going to try my hand at a Belgian style brew next up and want to try and make a nice dubbel. The recipe I'm thinking is:

23L batch
75% efficiency

5.5kg Pilsner
250g Special B
250g Biscuit
250g Caramunich 3
100g acidulated

Hallertau Hersbrucker at 60 min to about 20IBU and fermented with WLP500 monastery ale yeast. I'll also add about 350g of dark candi syrup.

Never done a Belgian style before so I have a few questions.

1. Should I add the syrup before fermentation, or wait until it's already moving along?

2. Originally I was going to use aromatic instead of biscuit, but the HBS doesn't stock it. Is it sold under a different name? Will the substitution of biscuit be ok/better/worse?

3. Also considering subbing a kilo of the pilsner malt for munich. Do you think this is a good idea or am I getting a bit over complicated?

Any other advice from more experienced dubbel brewers?
 
1 -- I would add the Candi at 10 minutes along with any nutrient and fining additions.
2 -- Biscuit is often used as a good substitute for Aromatic so nothing to get worried about there. I've used both at the same time with good effect.
3 -- Nothing to worry about there either as you can expect a slightly more malty/sweet flavour profile. Adjust your bitterness to suit if unhappy with this.
200 g or so of (chopped-up) raisins added at 10 minutes wouldn't hurt either IMHO.
Hope this helps?
 
Now, I'll start with saying I've only done several Belgians (inc 2 dubbels) over the last few years, so my experience is limited, and my opinion is going to be based on that experience plus what works for my personal tastes.

What sort of dubbel do you want?
A more malty version of a more caramel version? (Well, that's roughly how I divide them, similar to red ales).

What you have there should be fairly good for a first shot at a dubbel.
One option could be to go as simple as possible: Pilsner, spec B, and the D2; all done to the right colour depth (plus a little acidulated for mash pH).
That'll almost certainly work fine, and is possibly how a lot of Belgian breweries do their dubbel.
Keep in mind maybe 50% or more of what makes a dubbel (or any other Belgian style beer) is the yeast strain and performance.
Have a look at the recipes on the Candi syrup Inc website recipes - most are base malt + 1 syrup, maybe with a bit of 1 spec malt.

Adding a little extra of biscuit/Munich/aromatic/caramunich will add complexity but might also "blur" the flavours a bit. So maybe pick one of those and just go with that one. I've never used caramunich, so I'm not sure about this, but i believe CM3 is akin to Dark Crystal. So I wouldn't bother with it - you're already covering that area with the SpecB and D2.
Aromatic would be best, IMO, but if you don't have it, I'd go biscuit or Munich. I love biscuit, but I'd be tempted to just go a bit of Munich, say 0.5-1kg. Should add more malt complexity and a little bready element, without being too prominent. Biscuit could be great, and I do love it in almost any beer, but I'm not sure you want that biscuity toasty element in a dubbel.
Hops looks fine.
Not familiar with WLP-500, so I can't help on that one. Fwiw, WLP-530 is great for Belgian strong ales.
I'm someone who struggles to not use 10 different malts in a recipe, so I appreciate I'm contradicting my own practice in the past, but I'm learning to simplify my recipes to improve the flavours profiles. I think of it a little like comparing single malt scotch to blended scotch. Single malt has more refined and distinctive flavours, blended scotch is kinda like generic scotch flavour.

To actually answer you questions:
1) you normally add it either 5 mins before the end of the boil or ~2/3rds through the fermentation. I prefer the latter. In theory it can provide a better result, but it mightn't make much difference.

2) depends what maltsters your HBS stocks. Gladfields and some others might have a version of Aromatic under an odd name, but I'd suggest you really want Belgian spec malt for this if you can (maybe Gladfields would be worth trying as well).

3) as per comments above

Good luck, dubbels are great!
 
Wow, thanks heaps for the detailed responses guys. I probably want more malty than caramel sweet, although I'm hoping to get some nice dark fruit and raisin flavours coming through as well. I might drop the caramunich and either up the biscuit a little or throw in some munich. The yeast strain is apparently more fruity than wlp530. Google says it is the Chimay strain and the Chimay red was the first Belgian beer I ever had, and still one of my favourites.

The recipe is based heavily on a recipe from brewing classic styles, but yeah I usually try to avoid putting more than 3 or 4 malts in a brew so it was looking a bit cluttered to me.

Given that I don't have an oxygenation setup I think I'll add the syrup once fermentation has kicked off. That way I can start at a lower OG so as to put the yeast under less stress.
 
Back
Top