You may have noticed that recently we’ve been boarderline obsessed with Belgian beers. We’ve done several tasting over the last few weeks including a dubbel, a witbier, a siason, and a flanders red ale. Belgium is home to some of the oldest and most famous breweries in the world. The beer styles they churn our are material enough for their own posting, but today we focus on the only logical outcome of our recent Belgian fixation: brewing our own.
The style we chose to brew is a Belgian Golden Strong Ale; the first and most famous of which is known simply as Duvel. In tribute to the original and alluding to the high alcohol content, it is common practice for breweries to reference the Devil in naming their example of the stye. In keeping with that tradition we’re calling Hapa’s version Kepolo Golden Ale.
Duvel
We used traditional Belgian grains for this recipe with Belgian 2-row acting as our base malt. To bump up the sugar content and ultimately the alcohol content, we added another traditional ingredient: Belgian candi sugar.
Grain bill: Belgian 2-row, Caravienne, and Carapils Belgian Candi Sugar
A single rest mash was used as was a continuous sparge. Wort was collected and put on the fire for the boil. Belgian beers are traditionally lightly hopped, at least by American standards, to allow the distinct malt and fruity esters flavors to shine through. We stayed true to the style and used two European hop varietals whose bittering potential is quite low. The candi sugar was added in the last fifteen minutes of the boil to prevent scortching. After the beer was cooled Belgian Golden Ale yeast was pitched and 24 hours later we had some very active fermentation.
Hit our target gravity of 1.070+ Belgiun Golden Ale yeast is very tolerant of alcohol.
Just like Drunk Uncle Dave!
