#35 - 6° Dubbel

This is the first of a series of the beers (and second of the posts) in the same theme of Belgian Trappist styles.  The first beer brewed in the series was this  6° Dubbel with an 8° Tripel and 10° Quad coming later.  I designed each of these recipes attempting to be fairly to-style.

In addition to the 3 to-style recipes I also plan to make a 7° spiced dark ale mimicking speculoos cookies, a blend of the Dubbel and Quad with a spice tincture made from ginger, cardamom, clove, nutmeg, white pepper, black pepper and cinnamon, and a 9° Golden Strong by adding honey and sage to the Tripel.

This Dubbel is designed to showcase the complex raisin and caramel flavors from Special B malt, Candi Syrup Inc.'s D-90 and D-180 and the estery and phenolic flavors from Wyeast 3787.

My first tasting gave a less than desirable perception of clean and bitter.  When tasting again at racking to secondary the yeast and sugar elements came through much more clearly giving the impression that this will be a nice Belgian ale that ranks up there with commercial examples of the style.

Racked to secondary after 3 weeks of vigorous fermentation.  Fairly dark but still within style guidelines.

3 tinctures: Sage (for the Golden Strong), cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, white pepper, cardamom ginger (for the Speculoos influenced dubbel/quad blend) and a separate ginger/cardamom/clove one (that might be used to balance the heavy levels of nutmeg an cinnamon or might find use elsewhere).  The sage is extremely pleasant, herbal and sweet with the cinnamon slightly dominating its tincture and giving a "fireball" impression, and the third has a very different sort of sweet and hot ginger character that I go back and forth on my opinion of.