Belgian tripel using pale ale malt?

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What makes a porter a porter? Stylings are just an arbitrary grouping of beers into categories to make it similar.

Trippels are generally, pale, strong abv, and fairly fizzy and have some decent phenolic flavours from the Belgian yeasts

The BJCP style guidelines are a good source of information for styles, but don't get too hung up on their prescriptive wording like "it must be ..." and colour/ibu/abv ranges - take them for what they are: guidelines.
Just made a mild with enough pale ale malt and 500g Belgian aromatic to give an OG of 1060 and bittered to 70+ IBUs with fuggles. It will look like a bitter, drink rich and very slightly sweet, and be, well, bitter. Racked it the other day and the RG is 1008 so it's climbing up to 7% abv,
Anybody recognise that as a mild? According to some of the recipes Pattinson has collected from the first half of the 19th century, with the BB suffix, mine is a but a pale imitation!
 
This irritates me! Why on earth has Brewfather only got phosphoric acid and lactic as the only acid options?
I use citric acid so how would I input this into Brewfather?
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Grain Bill for my last Tripel was 6.25kg Maris Otter and 250g Caragold, plus 1kg of Tate and Lyle granulated sugar. Used M31, which is a good choice as it is very highly attenuative and gives a Belgian-esque aroma and flavour. Hops were Saaz and Styrian Goldings. A bit fierce @ 9.5% ABV, but hey-ho, the B/F of the younger daughter thought it was the business, IIRC.
 
I have an ssbrewtech InfuSsion mash tun so unfortunately don’t have the ability to raise the mash temp that way. Is it totally necessary?
Edit: I could sparge at 72c for 20 minutes though, maybe this is what you meant anyway?
No, then do a mash of an hour at 65° C. A tripel must be highly attenuated. That's something I forgot. I use from 10% to 20% sugar in my tripels.

It is relatively simple for me to multiple temperature mashes because I brew at most 10 l of beer, and I use a 10 l cooking pot, which makes it easy to raise the temperature.
 
Grain Bill for my last Tripel was 6.25kg Maris Otter and 250g Caragold, plus 1kg of Tate and Lyle granulated sugar. Used M31, which is a good choice as it is very highly attenuative and gives a Belgian-esque aroma and flavour. Hops were Saaz and Styrian Goldings. A bit fierce @ 9.5% ABV, but hey-ho, the B/F of the younger daughter thought it was the business, IIRC.
More or less like the grandaddy of tripels, then, Westmalle Tripel.
 
Sooo…. Can anyone help regarding my citric acid comment?
I've never heard of home brewers using citric acid in beer. It's possibly used in mass produced beer as an acidity regulator, but for the likes of us it seems unsuitable as its salts have a tart flavour. I suppose you're using it the lower mash pH? There's a good reason phosphoric or lactic acids are used and that's because their salts, are relatively flavourless. I use CRS, which is a mixture of food grade hydrochloric and sulphuric acids, and this helps add chlorides and sulphates, which are desirable, but citrates are not really desirable.
I'd get some phosphoric acid if that's what your recipe software wants, or use acidulated malt.
 
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I use Lactic acid sometimes but mainly use Acid malt in the grainbill
I understand that acidulated malt is made by encouraging the lactic acid bacteria on the surface of the barley to do their job and produce a certain amount of lactic acid before kilning. Both are detectable if you use a lot. I used to use the malt in a kind of guesswork way for lagers and pale ales, but I never really worked out how much I should be using. I use it now to give a sour bite in dry Irish stouts.
 
Yes it can be detectable if used too much. I experimented with lower amounts till I found my happy medium I use 170g per 21ltr brew and it gets me around 5.2 to 5.4 for my mash but too much gives a citric/acid taste which as AA has said can be used to enhance certain brews.
I made a Japanese lager and used the usual amount but and I do not scientifically know this after using the Glucoamylase to get a lower FG it has a distinct acidic taste?
 
I've never heard of home brewers using citric acid in beer. It's possibly used in mass produced beer as an acidity regulator, but for the likes of us it seems unsuitable as its salts have a tart flavour. I suppose you're using it the lower mash pH? There's a good reason phosphoric or lactic acids are used and that's because their salts, are relatively flavourless. I use CRS, which is a mixture of food grade hydrochloric and sulphuric acids, and this helps add chlorides and sulphates, which are desirable, but citrates are not really desirable.
I'd get some phosphoric acid if that's what your recipe software wants, or use acidulated malt.
Interesting, that’s very much for that mate 👍🏼
I think it was brewers friend originally that had citric acid as an option for lowering mash ph.
I don’t use brewers friend anymore 😂
 
Sooo…. Can anyone help regarding my citric acid comment?
I'm afraid I can't, as my water is so hard it jumps out the tap, claiming you have spilled it's pint, and smacks you in the face, so I need fairly high amounts of acid even in dark beers to hit a decent mash ph. Well above the taste threshold for citric. Have you tried contacting the developer? He is pretty responsive on Facebook and might be able to add it as an ingredient.

Alternatively, get hold of some food grade phosphoric acid.
 
I'm afraid I can't, as my water is so hard it jumps out the tap, claiming you have spilled it's pint, and smacks you in the face, so I need fairly high amounts of acid even in dark beers to hit a decent mash ph. Well above the taste threshold for citric. Have you tried contacting the developer? He is pretty responsive on Facebook and might be able to add it as an ingredient.

Alternatively, get hold of some food grade phosphoric acid.
I did not know this, I’ll see if I can find him on Facebook, cheers
 
As Marshbrewer has said if you need to use a lot of Lactic/Acid Malt then you can start to get a acidic taste but that is to the excess for most, in that case us Phosphoric as I believe it is less leaning towards taste residue in larger amounts
 
Wow I wasn’t expecting such a positive response lol! So in terms of yeasts- I use dried yeast is there one people would recommend? I’ve used Safale t-58 with a leffe kit before with great results but I’m unsure of the abv limit of this one.
Does anyone a tried and trusted tripel recipe? 7-9% ish?
Just out of curiosity, when you say leffe kit do you mean extract kit? If so where did you get it from as I’d love to give it a try. Cheers
 

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