Belgian Trippel IPA

I brewed today, finally!

I made a Belgian inspired IPA. I love Belgian Trippels, with their light color and body and sweet flavor, combined with high alcohol - what's not to love!

I also love IPA. All those hops, bittering up the mouth, totally inaccessible to BMC drinkers. What beer lover doesn't love IPA?

SO I thought "Belgian Trippel IPA"! I wanted to do a pilot batch (word to the wise - DON'T DO IT!) so I made a 1 gallon batch, with 3 lbs of fermentables and 2 oz of hops. For those who don't know, a standard 5 gallon batch is 10 lbs of fermentables and 2 oz of hops. So this is a monster. It should end up over 10% alcohol by volume (for comparison, Sam Adams is about 4.7%).

Unfortunately, it seems my 5 gallon system isn't quite geared for a 1 gallon batch. I normally get 60-70% efficiency, meaning I get 60-70% of the theoretical yield (in the form of fermentable sugars) from the grain. Well today I got 52% efficiency. As if that wasn't bad enough, I also got a low volume yield. I aimed for 0.75 gallons and ended up with probably 0.5 gallons - even after adding an extra quart to the brew!

:( is all I can say.

Fortunately, I plan to add corn sugar as dosage at transfer to secondary (or at least once primary fermentation is done), so all I have to do to compensate for this low mashing efficiency is to add 20% more corn sugar (0.60 lbs instead of 0.50 lbs). I think my Trappist High Gravity yeast (WY3787) can handle it.

I also managed to bottle my Strawberry Infused American Wheat Beer (which ended up being more Wit than Wheat, I guess thanks to my Duvel Clone's yeast somehow). I got 9 bottles out of what I thought was a gallon (which should be 12 bottles), but hey that's cool. Maybe tomorrow I can bottle my "Public IPA" made at my public brewing last month from an extract kit donated by Rob's.