Gulden Kraai

This recipe attempts to clone the Belgian tripel Gulden Draak. I am using the recipe provided by Austin Homebrew Supply. My first note is that it seems a good bit lighter than Gulden Draak so if I brew this again, I will change some of the particulars.

Ingredients

Grains

2 1/2 lbs. Belgian Pale Ale Malt

14 oz. 60°L Crystal Malt

1/4 lb. Aromatic Malt

3 oz. Cara Munich Malt

2 oz. Biscuit Malt

Extract and Sugars

1/2 lb. Clear Candi Sugar

9 1/4 lb. Extra Pale Malt Extract

2 lb. Extra Light Dried Malt Extract

1 lb. Wheat Dried Malt Extract

Hops and Yeast

1 oz. Brewers Gold Hops

1/4 oz. Styrian Golding Hops

2 Wyeast Strong Belgian Ale pitchable yeast packs

Algorithm

Prep

Started on February 17, 2012 by popping the first Wyeast smack pack and let it expand for two days. Continued by making a starter of 6 Tablespoons of Amber DME in 600ml of filtered Round Rock water. (Filtered through a Berkey Light gravity feed filtration system). Boiled for five minutes in an Erlenmeyer flask, cooled and pitched the yeast on February 19, 2012 to create the starter. Put a fermentation lock on the flask and put it in a dark place for a two days to start really pumping. Boiled four gallons of filtered Round Rock water to remove chlorine and let it cool.

Brew

February 21, 2012: Put all of the grains in a nylon grain bag and mashed grains in two gallons of water @155°F for 45 minutes. Extracted the wort and sparged the grains with three quarts of water at 170°F. DIscarded the spent grains. Brought wort to a boil and then removed from heat source. Added malt extract and brought back to a boil. At beginning of boil, added 1 oz. Brewers Gold hops for aroma and bittering. After 45 minutes, added about 1/4 oz. Styrian Golding hops for flavoring. Cooled with wort chiller and transferred to plastic bucket adding chilled water to bring the temperature down. Racked into 6 Gallon glass primary fermenter. Pitched yeast at 66°F.
February 26, 2012: Popped second Wyeast smack pack and let it swell for 24 hours.
February 27, 2012: Created second yeast starter in same manner as first.
February 29, 2012: Racked beer from primary fermenter into secondary fermenter. Because it was a larger quantity than the secondary could hold, the actual racked beer included almost no sediment and some potential beer was wasted...oh well. Took temperature and IG readings.

March 14, 2012: Boiled a pint of water and added 1.25 cups of amber dried malt extract for priming sugar.

Bottle

Bottled with my good friend Larry Thorne. Even though I added a second round of yeast, the specific gravity has not changed. It was still fermenting, but I think the alcohol generation was just about as far as that yeast can take it. For the next iteration of this brew, I will use a wine yeast for the second pitch. While bottling, we had about a six ounce pour left over and gave it a taste. It does taste quite a bit like Gulden Draak but the color is definitely lighter. For future reference, I will use amber malt extract in the place of extra pale malt extract. Looks like this one will be a winner.

Fermentation

OG 1.105 @ 66°F on Feb. 21, 2012 into glass primary fermenter.

IG 1.030 @ 64°F on February 29, 2012 racked to glass secondary

FG 1.030 @ 64°F on March 14, 2012 Bottled in brown glass

Results

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Last updated on November 11, 2012