Brewing Belgian-Style Tripels

Tripel is pale to golden in color, and strong (the BJCP guidelines list it as OG 1.075–1.085, and 7.5–9.5% ABV). However, three things keep it from seeming like a big beer — it’s relatively dry, sufficiently well-hopped and highly carbonated. There is considerable variation under the above umbrella and Belgian tripels even include beers, like Tripel Karmaliet, that are spiced. However, in most tripels, the spicy notes come from the yeast.

Water for All-Grain and Extract Brewers

Traditional Belgian tripels are brewed at a variety of locations in Belgium and there isn’t a single water profile that is common to all the breweries. And, of course, modern breweries treat their water to suit their needs. So, when preparing your brewing liquor, all you really need to do is make it suitable for brewing a pale beer. As with all beers, you should carbon filter your water (if you have a large, undersink filter) or treat it with metabisulfite (usually in the form of one Campden tablet per 20 gallons of brewing liquor) to eliminate the chloramines found in most municipal tap waters.

If you are an extract brewer, an excellent option for your water is to use either all distilled or RO water, or your local tap water diluted with distilled water so the carbonate level is below 50 ppm. The minerals in the water used to produce the malt extract will all still be present in the liquid or powdered extract, so there is no need to add to them with your water. If you do a partial mash, using distilled water with a couple pinches of calcium — from calcium chloride (CaCl2) or gypsum (CaSO4) — would be a good option.

Pilsner Malt and Sugar

The basic grain bill for a tripel is Pilsner malt. You can use small amounts of other malts if you’d like, but all you really need is Pilsner malt. This supplies roughly 80% of the fermentable carbohydrates for the brew, with the rest coming from refined sugar. Since Pilsner malt is going to be the dominant (and perhaps the only) malt, use a good quality malt. Belgian, German or French Pilsner malts are an obvious first choice. You can even blend two or more Pilsner malts in your grist, if you’d like.
You have a few options when it comes to the sugar that will be added as a kettle adjunct. The simplest approach is just to use white table sugar (sucrose), but you can also use corn sugar (glucose) or sucrose syrup, if that’s available.

In the past, many North American homebrew recipes called for “candi sugar” to be used as the adjunct in tripels. And, when you went to your local homebrew shop, “candi sugar” meant a form of crystalized rock sugar. (These days, some candi sugar is also sold as a liquid. The dark, liquid form can be nice in dubbels.) You can use candi sugar, if you’d like, but be aware that it isn’t traditional (Belgian breweries never used the rock form) and it is more expensive. All you really need the sugar to do is provide a flavorless, 100% fermentable addition to the beer — to raise the OG without raising the FG.

Other Possible Malts

There are a variety of other malts you could use along with your base Pilsner malt, but none of them are required to make a good tripel. Some tripels use a bit of wheat (almost always under 10% of the grist), and this can be malted wheat, unmalted wheat, flaked wheat or reputedly even flour. A little bit of wheat gives that characteristic wheat “snap,” and this can be a nice addition if it doesn’t threaten to overshadow the Pilsner malt character.

You can also use some of the “malty malts” – Vienna or Munich — in small amounts to punch up the maltiness of the brew, and make the beer a slightly deeper shade of golden. (Tripel is 4.5–7 SRM, according to the BJCP.) Using under 10% Vienna or under 5% Munich would be the best approach — again, the idea is the Pilsner malt should dominate the malt flavor in the beer.

Don’t use any crystal or caramel malts, including CaraPils. These will add body to the beer, which is unwanted, and also a caramel-like sweetness, which doesn’t work well in a tripel.

A dash of acidulated malt (under 5% of the grain bill) may be just the thing if your water chemistry won’t let you achieve the proper mash pH. However, too much would give the beer a lactic twang, which isn’t usually a part of the flavor profile.

There are other malts that could potentially be added in small amounts to a tripel, but you should have a very good reason for including them. And in this case, “to add complexity,” doesn’t count as a good reason. Think about exactly how that malt is going to work with the Pilsner malt (and influence fermentability) and only add it if you think it won’t interfere with the overall concept of a tripel.
Tripel is not a type of beer that benefits from using lots of different types of malt. If you want to add to the grain bill, pick one other malt — such as wheat or Vienna — and use a small amount of that.

Adding little bits of this, that and the other only decreases the percentage of Pilsner malt in the grist, and you want that to be the backbone of your malt character. Three great grain bills for a triple would be 1.) roughly 80% Pilsner malt and roughly 20% sugar 2.) roughly 70% Pilsner malt, roughly 10% wheat and roughly 20% sugar or 3.) roughly 70% Pilsner malt, roughly 10% Vienna malt and roughly 20% sugar.

Neutral Hops

Like most Belgian beers, a good tripel is well-balanced. In Belgium, balance means favoring the malt slightly over the hops — at least as far as North American palates are concerned. A good tripel actually has a decent amount of hop bitterness to it, but this falls just behind the Pilsner malt character and fermentation characteristics of the yeast in the overall flavor and aroma profile.

Virtually any hop in the vicinity of “neutral” (not strongly varietally flavored) will work well, as all you want from the hops are a firm bitterness (20–40 IBUs, says the BJCP) with relatively little flavor and aroma. Noble hops are an obvious choice, but any hop that doesn’t draw too much attention to itself will be fine.

Strongly-Fermenting Yeast

Pretty much any Belgian-derived strain, perhaps even those for wits or saisons, could be used to ferment a tripel, although some choices would be better than others. Arguably, your best choices might be White Labs WLP500 (Trappist Ale), Wyeast 1214 (Belgian Ale), White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity). These strains come from Trappist breweries that produce tripels, the first two coming from Chimay and the last two coming from Westmalle. Some other possibilities include White Labs WLP570 (Belgian Golden Ale) or Wyeast 1388 (Belgian Strong Ale) — these are from Moortgat (makers of Duvel). Duvel is categorized by the BJCP as a Strong Golden Ale, but if you look at the descriptions of that category versus tripels, you will see similarities.

The Belgian brewery De Koninck makes a tripel and their yeast is available through White Labs as WLP515 (Antwerp Ale). Achouffe makes pale Belgian beers, including a beer that they describe as an IPA tripel, and their yeast is White Labs WLP550 (Belgian Ale) and Wyeast 3522 (Belgian Ardennes) yeast. If you prefer dried yeast, Fermentis produces two strains that you could try, SafAle T-58 and SafAle S-33. The latter is claimed to do well in producing abbey-style ales.

Mash for Fermentability

Although the sugar in the ingredients will lower your fermentability, you will still need to adjust your mash conditions so you produce a highly-fermentable wort. The best way to do this is with a step mash.

There are a variety of popular step mashes out there, and if you’ve used one before when making other beers, it will likely work well when brewing a tripel. If not, a simple but effective step mash is one with an initial rest at 140–142 °F (60–61 °C). This is the range for optimal beta amylase activity. You can rest here for anywhere from 15 minutes to much longer (although you probably don’t need to exceed 90 minutes). Next ramp the temperature up to the lower saccharification range, anywhere in the 150–153 °F (66–67 °C) range. The longer you’ve spent at the first rest, the less time you need at the higher rest, although you should probably spend a minimum of 20 minutes in this range. You can add a mash out step, up to 168 °F (76 °C) if you’d like.

I’ve found that a good “all-purpose” single-step mash for producing a highly fermentable wort consists of a 45 minute rest at 140 °F (60 °C) followed by 20 minutes at 152 °F (67 °C). With the time taken for heating the mash between rests, the overall mash takes about 90 minutes. If you add boiling water to mash out, it only takes a few extra minutes.

If you are using a mash tun that can’t be heated directly, you can raise the temperature of the mash either by adding hot water or by pulling decoctions, bringing them to a boil and returning them to the main mash.

If a step mash is out of the question, try a 90-minute single infusion mash at 148 °F (64 °C); stir the mash frequently, if you can do so without losing too much heat.

If you really want to maximize the fermentability of your wort, you can extend the low temperature rest. Also, keep in mind that a mash pH in the 5.3–5.4 range yields the most highly fermentable worts (although anything in the standard 5.2–5.6 range is fine).

Lauter for Extract

When lautering, you want to get the most from your Pilsner malt, but not extract too many tannins, which will cause astringency. Heat your sparge water to the point that the grain bed temperature will rise to 168 °F (76 °C), then keep the water heated such that the top of the grain bed will remain at that temperature as you collect your wort. Once you get to the point that you have collected roughly 1 gallon of wort per every 2 lbs. of pale malt (~4 L/kg), start checking the gravity of your runnings with a refractometer. Stop collecting wort somewhere in the 2–3 °Plato range (SG 1.008–1.012).

If you have a pH meter, check the pH of your final runnings and don’t exceed 5.8. You can also quickly cool small samples of run off and taste them. If they begin to taste too astringent, stop sparging.

Boil Hard

The ingredients of your tripel include a large dose of sugar. As a consequence, your fully-sparged grain bed is not going to yield an amount of wort that needs to be boiled for a long time to condense the wort (as might be the case with an all-grain barleywine in the same OG range). A 60–90-minute boil will likely do the trick for you.

Boil the wort vigorously for the entire boil period. Unless you have hot spots in your kettle, you shouldn’t pick up too much color from a hard boil. Once the hot break appears, examine it. It should be fluffy and “snowflake-like.” If the hot break consists of tiny specks of material (or the pH, if you measure it, is above 5.2), add about 50 ppm calcium chloride to the boil. For 5 gallons (19 L) of beer, this is roughly 1⁄4 tsp. of calcium chloride. This should drop the boil pH into the acceptable range (5.0–5.2) — the appearance of big, fluffy bits of hot break will be your visual confirmation.

Add the hops for the final 60 minutes of the boil. As an option, you can also add some first wort hops as you collect your wort. Generally, no late hop additions are used as tripels don’t show a lot of hop flavor (in the way that American pale ales and IPAs do). You could experiment with adding a small amount of late hops — but keeping the total late hop additions (in the last 20 minutes of the boil) under 1⁄3 oz. per 5 gallons (9 g/19 L) would best preserve the classic tripel taste and aroma.

Add the sugar near the end of the boil, being careful to stir as you go. Keep stirring past the point you think all the sugar has been dissolved, just to be certain no thick sugar solution collects at the bottom of the kettle and caramelizes, darkening your wort.

Guide Your Fermentation

Your tripel wort is going to a be a highly-fermentable, high-gravity wort, with plenty of simple sugars but perhaps fewer compounds that serve as yeast nutrients because a portion of the fermentables came from refined sugar. A further complicating issue is that you don’t simply want the beer to ferment completely, and to a low FG (the BJCP lists the FG as 1.008 to 1.014), you also want to coax the right character from your yeast. Specifically, you want a moderate amount of ester production (and, with the Belgian yeast strain, the “spiciness” that comes along with this). Running a good fermentation is essential to producing a good tripel, and is somewhat of a balancing act.

For starters, to get the right yeast character, you should pitch less yeast than you normally would for a strong ale. The desired yeast characteristics in a tripel come mostly from the yeast while it is growing, and if you pitch too much yeast, you will miss out on this. Pitch between half and three-quarters of the regular recommended pitching rate for an ale of this size. Do not pitch less than this and be absolutely sure your yeast is healthy. For 5-gallons (19-L) of tripel, a 2.5–3.5 qt. (2.4–3.3 L) yeast starter should do the trick.

You will want to ferment your tripel at a temperature high enough to keep the yeast active, but low enough that the estery character from the yeast isn’t overblown. Start your fermentation in the mid 60s °F (around 18 °C), but then let the fermentation temperature rise almost to 70 °F (21 °C) in the final days of primary fermentation. This rise will help keep the yeast working.

With the high wort gravity and all of the simple sugars available early in fermentation, you may experience a temperature spike around high kräusen. Monitor your fermentation temperature and lower your wort temperature if needed. Do not let it climb above 70 °F (21 °C) early. Conversely, keep an eye as fermentation slows that you don’t chill the wort down too much. You want the fermentation temperature to rise after the most vigorous part of fermentation has finished. One way to conceptualize a tripel fermentation is to recognize that you face some challenges in fermenting this wort — you have a high gravity wort with a fair amount of sugar as an adjunct, plus you’ve “underpitched” — and you need to manipulate your fermentation temperature to minimize the impact of these negative factors.

Of course, you should aerate your wort throughly once the wort is chilled and immediately before the yeast is pitched. Adding yeast nutrients in the kettle is also a good idea. Take a look at what the manufacturer recommends and don’t exceed that rate.

Carbonate Highly

In Belgium, tripels are both bottle conditioned and served from draft, although individual breweries may have a preference for one over the other. For example, Westmalle does not release kegs of tripel, but Chimay does. No matter how you package your tripel, you do need to carbonate it highly, to about 4 volumes of CO2. High levels of carbonation accentuate the dryness of the beer and are an important part of the style.

If you are kegging, check a carbonation chart and adjust the CO2 pressure depending on the temperature of your beer. (One such chart can be found at: http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php) For example, if you store your beer at 40 °F (4.4 °C), you would need to apply 29 lbs. of CO2 pressure to yield 4.0 volumes of CO2. A well-maintained keg will easily be able to hold this pressure, but make sure all your keg connections are clamped and tightened, just in case.

If you bottle condition your tripel, as is more common, you will need to add the right amount of priming sugar. That amount depends both on how much carbonation you desire and how much CO2 your beer has retained after fermentation. Check out the priming carbonation chart at byo.com (click on “Resource Guide” at the top of the page then “Carbonation Priming Chart” ) for guidance here. If, for example, your 5 gallons (19 L) of tripel finished at 70 °F (21 °C), you would need to add 10.5 oz. (297 g) of corn sugar — about twice the normal rate for priming ales — to get the full level of carbonation. Store the bottles warm, ideally around 80 °F (27 °C), for about 10 days, then check the carbonation by chilling one overnight and opening it. Move the beer to cold storage once the beer has carbonated.
Do not package your tripel in thin-walled bottles or bottles that show any evidence of stress or cracking. If you actually drink Belgian beer regularly, you can save the sturdy 33 cL bottles that take crown caps and use them to package your tripel. Or, you can package it in 750 mL bottles using a corker and wire cages. (See Dave Louw’s article in the July-August 2009 issue of BYO for how to cork Belgian-style beers.) If you can’t find a full supply of Belgian bottles, use the thickest bottles you can find, carbonate them to about 3.0 volumes of CO2 and store them somewhere they will not cause a problem if they burst (for example, in a sturdy case box, lined with a garbage bag).

Inside the Walls of Westmalle

Where did tripel come from? And when did it become popular? Tripels are not a particularly old beer style. Their creation was partly a response to a 1919 law banning cafés from serving hard liquor. Although we now think of Belgian brewers as the producers of strong beers, this was not the case back then. The move to brewing strong beers came as a result of café patrons, forbidden from ordering hard liquor, desiring a stronger beer. In 1934, to commemorate the opening of their new brewhouse, Westmalle introduced its now famous Westmalle Tripel. Even Westmalle doesn’t claim to be the first brewery to make a strong pale beer and label it a tripel, but theirs today is (arguably) the most well-known and highly-revered example of the style.

I met with Philippe Van Assche (pictured here), the Director of Brewing Operations at Westmalle. We sat down for a chat in their offices, and then toured the brewery. Van Assche revealed that Westmalle was currently using mostly French malts, but wouldn’t comment on which maltsters in particular. He would say that they used Saaz and Tettnang hops at the brewery because they believed these provided lots of flavor. (However, lots of hop flavor means something else to a Belgian brewer who told us he thought many US beers “lack balance.”) When asked about the key to brewing a good tripel, one thing Van Asshe stressed was avoiding oxidation.

All three of Westmalle’s beers are brewed from the same well water, which is treated to remove iron and is “quite hard.” The brewery continues to use the same yeast they have for years (and they also supply this yeast to Westvleteren and Achel).

Westmalle Tripel is becoming more popular, compared to their dubbel. Currently, about 60% of Westmalle’s production is the tripel, with most of the rest being their dubbel. Twenty years ago, 80% of their output was Westmalle Dubbel.

Their brewhouse is incredible — with huge copper vessels surrounded by detailed tile work. The old lauter tun and grant, with a line of multiple spigots, was still in place (seen behind Van Assche), but now the brewery uses a mash filter to separate the wort from the spent grains.

The beer is fermented in square fermenters (sheathed in more tilework), but a newly installed cylindrical conical fermenter was being tested for production while we were there. The brewery uses a lot of automation, especially in regards to packaging the beer and the room containing the packaging plant was cavernous. The brewery also has a very modern lab.

Most of Westmalle’s beer goes into 33 cL bottles. Only 5% (and only the dubbel) gets kegged and only 1% get packaged in 750 cL bottles. This package size is mostly for export to the US. Once packaged, the beer goes to their conditioning room, a warm room to let the beers carbonate. After the beer is conditioned, it is stored for 3–4 weeks at 50 °F (10 °C) before it is shipped.

Enjoy

Brewing the best tripel requires attention to detail — from choosing the best malt to guiding the fermentation on its way. But your efforts will be rewarded when you have a goblet full of aromatic, effervescent tripel to savor.

Tripel Recipes

Oostmalle Tripel

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.080 FG = 1.011
IBU = 34 SRM = 3 ABV = 9.0%

Ingredients

11.25 lbs. (5.1 kg) Pilsner malt (or a blend of Pilsner malts)
2.7 lbs. (1.2 kg) sugar (sucrose)
10 AAU Tettnanger hops (60 mins)
(2.25 oz./64 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) yeast
(3 qt./~3 L yeast starter)
1⁄2 tsp. Wyeast Yeast Nutrient Blend (or 1 capsule White Labs Servomyces)
9.5 oz. (269 g) corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Treat your water such that your level of carbonates is below 50 ppm and your calcium level is in the 50–75 ppm range. (If you adjust magnesium, shoot for the 10 to 30 ppm range.) For any calcium additions, use a mixture of calcium chloride and gypsum, unless your water is already rich in either chloride or sulfates and deficient in the other. [As an option, if your carbonates are in the 50–100 ppm range, bump up your calcium to 100 ppm and swap 2.5-5% of the Pilsner malt for acidulated malt. In the above grain bill, that would be about 1–2 lbs. (0.45–0.91 kg).]

Step mash with a 45-minute rest at 140 °F (60 °C), then ramp temperature to 152 °F (67 °C) and hold for 30 minutes. (Use 16 qts. (15 L) of strike water.) If you are heating your mash tun, heat at a rate of approximately 2 °F (1 °C) every 4 minutes. Stir every minute or so. (Raising your temperature will take about 20 minutes this way.) If you are adding boiling water to instantly raise your mash temperatures, extend the second rest by about 10 minutes. You can also pull a small decoction, about 1⁄4 of your mash, heat it to a boil and return it to the main mash to raise your mash temperature. As an option, you can raise the mash temperature to 168 °F (76 °C) for a mash out.

If you did not mash out, begin sparging with 190–200 °F (88–93 °C) water until the top of the grain bed reaches 168 °F (76 °C). Continue sparging with water hot enough to keep the grain bed at about 168 °F (~76 °C). If you did mash out, continue sparging with water hot enough to keep the grain bed at 168 °F (76 °C). Quit collecting wort when the specific gravity of the runoff drops to 1.008 or the pH climbs to 5.8, whichever comes first. Heat your wort as you are collecting it, aiming to have the boil start right around the time the runoff ends.

Boil until your hot break appears, then examine it. If it appears as big, fluffy, “snowflake-like” flakes, then proceed with the boil. If it consists of tiny granules of break material (or if you measure the wort pH and it is above 5.2), add 1⁄4 tsp. CaCl2. Boil vigorously for about 90 minutes, or however long it will take to reduce your volume such that you yield 5.0 gallons (19 L) of wort. (This should be at least 60 minutes.) Add the hops for the final 60 minutes of the boil. Stir the sugar into the wort when 15 minutes is left in the boil. Add yeast nutrients at the same time.

Cool to 65 °F (18 °C) quickly and transfer to your fermenter. Aerate well and pitch the yeast from the yeast starter. Maintain fermentation temperature of 65 °F (18 °C) for the first day of active fermentation, then allow it to rise in the next few days up to 70 °F (21 °C). Once fermentation has concluded, let the beer sit and condition for a few days, then bottle.

Bottle the beer in heavy beer bottles, or decrease the amount of priming sugar to 6.5 oz. (184 g) of priming sugar per 5 gallons (19 L). [Note: the 9.5 oz. of priming sugar assumes that your fermentation finished at 70 °F (21 °C); if it was colder, consult the priming chart at byo.com for how much to add.] Be sure to stir priming sugar into beer well enough that the sugar is evenly distributed. Store the conditioning beer warm, optimally, warmer than room temperature — up to 80 °F (27 °C). After two weeks, chill a bottle and test for carbonation. Store carbonated beer cold for at least two weeks before serving.

Oostmalle Tripel

(5 gallons/19 L, countertop partial mash)
OG = 1.080 FG = 1.011
IBU = 34 SRM = 5 ABV = 9.0%

Ingredients

4.0 lbs. (1.8 kg) Pilsner malt
(or a blend of Pilsner malts)
4.0 lbs. (1.8 kg) dried Pilsner malt extract (or 5 lb. 6 oz./2.4 kg liquid Pilsner malt extract)
2.7 lbs. (1.2 kg) sugar (sucrose)
10 AAU Tettnanger hops (60 mins)
(2.25 oz./64 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) yeast
1⁄2 tsp. Wyeast Yeast Nutrient Blend (or 1 cap. White Labs Servomyces)
9.5 oz. (269 g) corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Put crushed grains in a large nylon steeping bag. Heat 5.5 qts. (5.2 L) of water to 161 °F (72 °C) and pour it into your 2-gallon (7.6-L) cooler. Slowly submerge grain bag, using a large brewing spoon to ensure that the grain is mixed completely with the water. Let the mash rest, starting at 150 °F (66 °C) for 60 minutes. While the mash is resting, heat 1.0 gallon (3.8 L) of water to 148 °F (64 °C) in your brewpot and 5.5 qts. (5.2 L) of water to 180 °F (82 °C) in a large kitchen pot. When the mash is finished, recirculate by drawing off a pint or two of wort from the cooler and returning it to the top of the mash. Repeat until wort is clear or 3 quarts (~3 L) have been recirculated.

Next, collect the wort by pulling off a couple cups of wort and pouring it in your kettle, then adding the same amount of 180 °F (82 °C) water to the top of the grain bed. Repeat this until you have collected 2 gallons (7.6 L) wort from the mash — for a total of 3 gallons (11 L) in your brewpot. If you can vigorously boil more volume, up to a full-wort boil, do so. (The grain bed itself should slowly rise in temperature, but don’t let it exceed 170 °F/77 °C, especially near the end of wort collection. Cool your hot water to 170 °F/77 °C if this is the case.) Stir in roughly half of the malt extract, and re-establish a temperature of 148 °F (64 °C) in your brewpot and hold it there for 15 minutes. (This is to use the enzymes from your partial mash to degrade any possible unconverted complex carbohydrates in the malt extract.) Bring wort to a boil, add bittering hops and boil for 60 minutes. Stir in the sugar and yeast nutrients for the final 15 minutes of the boil. Stir in the remaining malt extract at the end of the boil, immediately after you turn of the heat. Stir the extract into the wort thoroughly (for at least a couple minutes), then allow the wort to sit before cooling for 5 minutes (including the time spent stirring). (The very late extract addition is to minimize color pickup and the 5-minute rest before cooling should sanitize the wort.)

After this, cool the wort until the side of brewpot is cool to the touch. Transfer your wort to a fermenter, add water to make 5 gallons (19 L), aerate well and pitch yeast from yeast starter. Follow the remainder of the all-grain recipe (warning included).

Oostmalle Tripel

(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.080 FG = 1.011
IBU = 34 SRM = 5 ABV = 9.0%

Ingredients

2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) Pilsner malt (or a blend of Pilsner malts)
7.0 lbs. (3.2 kg) liquid Pilsner malt extract
2.7 lbs. (1.2 kg) sugar (sucrose)
10 AAU Tettnanger hops (60 mins)
(2.25 oz./64 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) yeast
1⁄2 tsp. Wyeast Yeast Nutrient Blend (or 1 cap. White Labs Servomyces)
9.5 oz. (269 g) corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Steep crushed grains in 3.0 qts. (2.8 L) of water at 148 °F (64 °C) for 60 minutes. After the steep, place a colander over your brewpot and lift the grain bag into it. Pour the “grain tea” from the steeped grains through the bag (to strain out any floating bits), then rinse the bag with 1.5 qts. (1.4 L) of 170 °F (77 °C) water. Add roughly half of the malt extract and enough water to make at least 3.0 gallons (11 L) and bring to a boil. Add hops and boil your wort for 60 minutes. Stir in sugar and yeast nutrients for final 15 minutes of the boil. Add remaining malt extract immediately after shutdown. Follow all-grain recipe for fermentation instructions.

Written by Chris Colby