Westvleteren XII Clone - Silver Medal Winner

[strange-steve]

This is one of my favourite beers that I've brewed, not necessarily because it's the best, but I love the depth of flavour despite only having base malt and sugar. It was an attempt to replicate Westvleteren XII, using the same "keep it simple" approach they use. Is it as good as the real thing? Not even close, but I'm still happy with how it turned out

I entered it in this year's Irish national competition and got a silver medal in the trappist ale category. Judges comments were that it had a too strong alcohol flavour which I put down to a lack of aging. Another few months would probably have smoothed it out.

Westvleteren XII Clone
Belgian Dark Strong Ale

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 18
Total Grain (kg): 7.45
Total Hops (g): 85
Original Gravity (OG): 1.090
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 10.2 %
Colour (SRM): 36 (EBC): 72
Bitterness (IBU): 35 (Tinseth)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 65
Boil Time (Minutes): 120

Grain Bill
----------------
4.000 kg Pilsner (54%)
2.250 kg Pale Malt (30%)
1.200 kg Dark Candi Syrup (16%)

Hop Bill
----------------
20 g Northern Brewer Pellet (9.8% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
35 g Hallertau Mittlefrueh Pellet (3% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
30 g Styrian Golding Pellet (6.2% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)

Water Profile
----------------
Calcium - 107 ppm
Magnesium - 7 ppm
Sodium - 18 ppm
Sulphate - 71 ppm
Chloride - 148 ppm
Bicarb - 25 ppm

Notes
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The candi syrup is home-made by boiling muscovado sugar for 3 hours.
Single step Infusion at 64°C for 90 Minutes.
Boil down 3L of first runnings to a thick dark brown syrup and add to boil.
Fermented with Wyeast 3787 - Trappist High Gravity with a 2L starter (underpitched a tad to increase esters).
Pitch at 17°C and ramp by 1.5°C per day up to 27°C.
At around 1.015 rack to secondary and ramp down to 20° over 4 days.
At FG of 1.012 crash to 10°C and hold for 8 weeks.
Bottle at around 2.5 vol/CO2 with a pack of US-05.

Brewed 01/06/16
Bottled 10/08/16

 

[stigman]

Sounds awesome Steve. Gona have to give this a go. I will need to build up stocks first though. I only have use of one fridge that I use for fermenting. Over 8 weeks without a brew going on is Gona be boring times.

 

[strange-steve]

Sounds awesome Steve. Gona have to give this a go. I will need to build up stocks first though. I only have use of one fridge that I use for fermenting. Over 8 weeks without a brew going on is Gona be boring times.

Yeah make sure you have plenty to drink before brewing this! This is one of those beers that should be brewed, bottled and then forgotten about for a year or so.

 

[Zephyr259]

Hi Steve, I saw someone review this beer of yours. I was wondering how long did it take to boil down the 3L of first runnings and what was the water profile based on?

 

[jceg316]

Just reading over the brewing notes, you have "Bottle at around 2.5 vol/CO2 with a pack of US-05." Out of interest why do you add more yeast for bottling? Surely the existing yeast ould be able to carbonate?

 

[strange-steve]

Hi Steve, I saw someone review this beer of yours. I was wondering how long did it take to boil down the 3L of first runnings and what was the water profile based on?

I think from memory it took about an hour or so, then I added it at about 15 mins left of the boil. The water profile was a fairly generic one designed to enhance the malt flavours. If you're interested this is the water profile of Westvleteren, however that doesn't mean this is the profile they use at the brewery, because there's no doubt they treat it in some way:
Calcium (Ca+2): 114
Bicarbonate (HCO3-): 370
Magnesium (Mg+2): 10
Sodium (Na+): 125
Sulfate (SO4-2): 145
Chloride (Cl-): 139

 

[strange-steve]

Just reading over the brewing notes, you have "Bottle at around 2.5 vol/CO2 with a pack of US-05." Out of interest why do you add more yeast for bottling? Surely the existing yeast ould be able to carbonate?

In theory yes it should, but because this was lagered for 8 weeks after fermentation I didn't wat to risk it. I made similar beer once a few years ago which never carbed up, even after a year in the bottle.

 

[jceg316]

In theory yes it should, but because this was lagered for 8 weeks after fermentation I didn't wat to risk it. I made similar beer once a few years ago which never carbed up, even after a year in the bottle.

Makes sense. How come you go for US-05 instead of a bottling yeast?

 

[Zephyr259]

Cool so a decent bit of time but doable during sparge and boil. I'm thinking of a similar clone brew and a wee heavy where I'd do a first runnings reduction as well.

Thanks for the water info, I knew it was a "malty" profile but just wondered if there was more to it than that.

 

[strange-steve]

Makes sense. How come you go for US-05 instead of a bottling yeast?

Well it's hardy and reliable, but also cos it's what I had in the fridge :smile:

 

[strange-steve]

Cool so a decent bit of time but doable during sparge and boil. I'm thinking of a similar clone brew and a wee heavy where I'd do a first runnings reduction as well.

Thanks for the water info, I knew it was a "malty" profile but just wondered if there was more to it than that.

Exactly, I got the runnings on the boil straight away then carried on with the sparge and boil of the main wort. I've done it a few times now for various styles including a wee heavy, and it adds a lovely rich caramel flavour.

 

[SteveH]

Resurrecting an old thread to ask @strange-steve how did this one turn out, has it aged well?

I'm considering attempting something similar after reading about it in the James Morton book, but currently I only have heat temperature control (inkbird and a heat pad), also only use plastic fermenters so probably would have to do primary only (for about 4 weeks?) then bottle, any ideas if that's going to work OK?

Actually I do also have a couple of 2.5g cornies, so I guess I could do a half-batch then condition there, and bottle from it later for long-term maturation and free up the keg?

I know full temperature control and bulk ageing is preferable for this sort of thing, but just wondering if I can attempt this anyway, maybe put the fermenter outside (in a bag/box or something) for a couple of days, then bring inside and use the inkbird to step from ambient indoors, which is around 20c?

Thanks for any ideas or guidance

 

[Sadfield]

Corny kegs are great for conditioning beer in. Just leave it in the coolest place you can find. It might not drop as clear, but will be fine. IIRC, Westvleteren cold condition for two months at 10c, others go lower for a shorter period. Followed by a couple of weeks warm for refermentation in the bottle. They don't get any long maturation.

@strange-steve That's a nice colour from your candy syrup. I recently used some commercial stuff and didn't get enough colour from it. Although I only did a 90 minute boil.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Corny kegs are great for conditioning beer in. Just leave it in the coolest place you can find. It might not drop as clear, but will be fine. IIRC, Westvleteren cold condition for two months at 10c, others go lower for a shorter period. Followed by a couple of weeks warm for refermentation in the bottle. They don't get any long maturation.

@strange-steve That's a nice colour from your candy syrup. I recently used some commercial stuff and didn't get enough colour from it. Although I only did a 90 minute boil.

My advice when it comes to candy sugar is the same as using duct-tape. If its not doing the job you're not using enough.

 

[strange-steve]

@SteveH it turned out really well actually
It wasn't amazing but I was pleased with it. With regards to aging, I would say this peaked around the 6 month mark. I seem to have an issue with oxidation in my long term beers (I need to have a look at my bottling regime), which meant this deteriorated a little more quickly than it should have and I would say by the one year point it was rather past its best.

Don't get me wrong it wasn't terrible, I actually entered this into a second competition when it was a bit over a year old and it did OK, but certainly not medal worthy the second time round.

It's interesting though that on both occasions the judges made the same comment, that the alcohol flavour was too harsh and that I should keep an eye on pitch rates and fermentation temperatures. I don't think temperature was the issue because I pitched cool and slowly raised the temperature. But I did purposefully underpitch to boost ester production a little (a method I've used successfully numerous times with my saisons). I wasn't a big underpitch (about 15% from memory) but was it enough to cause the harsh alcohol flavour? Possibly, especially if the initial cell count estimate was off (although if you read Brulosophy, pitch rate isn't worth a damn :tinhat:).

I don't have enough experience with this yeast to say for sure how you'll get on without temperature control, however if you pitch cool and let it free rise (or bump it up towards the end of fermentation) I reckon it'd be fine.

As for bulk conditioning, I don't think it's really necessary but as Sadfield says, cornys are great for this

 

[strange-steve]

That's a nice colour from your candy syrup. I recently used some commercial stuff and didn't get enough colour from it. Although I only did a 90 minute boil

The syrup was really dark, almost black (if you can see through the stupid photobucket watermark) :

The beer was still a bit light in comparison to the real thing but this is without a doubt one of the prettiest beers I've made, a lovely deep red/ruby colour, the picture above doesn't really do it justice.

 

[SteveH]

Thanks for the feedback!

Sounds like it's worth a go - I could perhaps bottle half the batch and put the rest in a corny, my main concern is tying one up for many months as I've only got two (so far! )

Also I don't yet have a counter-pressure bottle filler or spunding valve, so secondary/bottling from the corny could cause more issues than it solves, so maybe an extended primary and bottle from there is the safer option.

 

[Sadfield]

With regards harsh alcohol, I've found my best results with big beers have been where I've pitched low 18-19c and let the temperature rise naturally to whatever it settles at. I usually set my fridge to come on at just below the yeasts max temperature, but on a small volume it never gets that high. I'd rather lose some esters than develop any harsh flavours. Going forward, I'm leaning towards different fermentor geometry and open fermentation to enhance esters.

 

[strange-steve]

fermentor geometry and open fermentation

I've been intrigued by this for a while but not yet tried it. Definitely something I'm going to look into a bit further.

 

[SteBeardface]

This sounds like an absolute beast of a beer, I'm well up for having a crack at it!

I'm curious to whether I could bottle it before crashing/lagering? Is it better to bulk age a beer than letting it age in the bottle? Also, what did you use for priming?