Advanced · 20 litres · all grain
Belgian Tripel
Pale, strong and deceptively drinkable: spicy yeast phenols over a soft pilsner malt base, finishing dry because a fifth of the extract is plain sugar.
Original gravity
1.077
at 70% efficiency
Final gravity
1.014
82% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
8.3%
by volume
Bitterness
21 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
4.5 SRM
9 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
7.00 kg
0.35 kg per litre
Brewed to Belgian Tripel, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
The sugar, and adding it late. Put it in at the start of the boil and the yeast eats it first, then struggles with the malt sugars afterwards; add it in stages after fermentation is under way and it finishes clean.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilsner malt | 5.80 kg | 1.8 L | 37 ppg | 83% |
| Vienna malt Pilsner malt alone lands under the style's colour floor. This is the smallest change that fixes it. | 0.45 kg | 3.5 L | 36 ppg | 6% |
| Table sugar Around 11% of the extract. Skip it and the beer finishes heavy and the alcohol turns cloying. | 0.75 kg | 0 L | 45 ppg | 11% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saaz | 45 g | 3.5% | 60 min | 14.2 IBU |
| Styrian Golding | 25 g | 5% | 15 min | 5.6 IBU |
| Saaz | 20 g | 3.5% | 5 min | 1.3 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Mash at 64C for 75 minutes for the most fermentable wort you can make.
- 02Boil 90 minutes.
- 03Pitch at 19C into well-oxygenated wort and let it free-rise to 26C.
- 04Add the sugar in two doses on days two and four, dissolved in a little boiled water.
- 05Condition a month and package at 3.2 volumes, in bottles rated for it.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 64 C for 75 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 70.0 C
- Strike volume
- 21.0 L
- Boil
- 90 min
- Ferment
- 19-26 C
- Carbonate to
- 3.2 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 182 g
- Yeast
- Trappist High GravityWyeast 3787
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 3.2 volumes this one needs about 182 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99