I have a real love of Belgian beers, and I love what American brewers have done with Belgian inspiration.  One of my favorite stateside breweries is Allagash, in Portland, Maine.  Allagash not only makes excellent examples of the typical Belgian-style White, Double, Tripel and Grand Cru styles, but they also do some slightly more esoteric barrel aged beers and experimental brews.  One of my top picks from this Maine favorite is Allagash Black.  This Belgian-style stout has big roast flavors reminiscent of chocolate and coffee layered on top of the slightly tart dark fruits that Belgian yeasts can produce in spades.  In short, it's delicious. 

It's also expensive, and a prime candidate for a homebrew recipe!  Allagash gives a hint of the grain bill on their web site, mentioning 2 row German malt, torrefied wheat and oats.  Of course there has to be a healthy dose of dark roasted grains.  I wanted a bit more of the dark fruit flavor, so I added a bit of Special B to the mix.  Here's the grain bill:

12lb Pale 2 row malt - I used a Belgian, but any would do fine. 

1lb torrefied wheat

1lb Belgian chocolate malt

1lb roast barley

1lb Dingeman's Special B

2lb Munich

1lb Belgian Dark Candi syrup

One of my favorite adjuncts to add to a dark Belgian beer (especially in my Double) is a dark candi syrup.  Not to be confused with the dark rocks sold in many shops, this stuff is a pungent dark caramelized sugar syrup and lends a great flavor to the finished beers.  It's also an easy way to bump the gravity a touch.  The Belgians tend to make digestible beers, with a high degree of attenuation.  For this reason I mash at a pretty low temperature with a long mash.  Usually around 150F for 75 or 80 minutes does the trick.  I like a thick mash, around 1.25 qt/lb, and fly sparge until I have collected about 6 gallons.

Allagash Black doesn't have a ton of hop bitterness or aromatics.  It's definitely dominated by the dark grains.  I use the following hop additions:

1oz Galena (14.1%) - 60 mins

1oz East Kent Goldings (4.5%) - 30 mins

1oz East Kent Goldings (4.5%) - Flameout

On my relatively inefficient setup I end up with 5 gallons of wort with a starting gravity of 1.080 or so.  A Belgian-style beer calls for a Belgian yeast strain, and I usually use WLP530 here.  3 weeks in the fermenter in the mid 70s gets the gravity down to about 1.010, yielding a beer that comes out around 7.5%.  As is traditional, I like to bottle condition this beer instead of kegging.  6 oz of corn sugar gets the carbonation to 3 volumes at 75F.  To add a little extra complexity, use a fresh dose of a different Belgian yeast strain for the bottle fermentation.

Brew it up and enjoy! 

Back on Jan 10, I started the WBA Concise Course at the Siebel Institute.  At this point we're about halfway through the course, and we have already covered a ton of ground.  The first half of the course started, predictably enough, with a dive into the history of brewing, and some of the traditions of notable brewing regions.  From there, we moved into a detailed overview of all of the steps of the brewing process.  The next weeks were spent on a deep dive into all of the ingredients in beer, the varieties used, and the parameters we measure to determine the suitablility of ingredients in the process.  Another two weeks were spent on the hot side of the brewing process, delving into the equipment and operations for producing wort from raw materials.  Now, we are in the middle of a couple weeks of in depth study of the actual fermentation, yeast management, flavor byproducts, system design and beer maturation.

I am not sure what online eduction (LMS, or learning management system) platform Siebel is using, but it appears that they use Tegrity lecture capture software.  Tegrity provides a nice mix of instructor video, slides and whiteboarding, and is a pretty good way to create the video lectures.  Siebel also conducts weekly instructor discussions, about an hour in length.  Our class is fairly large, so the class is broken up into 3 chat groups.  The instructors do a good job of guiding the discussion and keeping it relevant to the current course material.  However, I wish the disucssions moved a little quicker.  It feels like a lot more ground could (and should) be covered.  On the bright side, the instructors always send the full transcripts of all 3 chats to the whole class.  This has proven useful as sometimes a question our group did not have time to get around to will be addressed by one of the other groups.

I was a bit skeptical of taking a brewing course online.  So far it seems there was no need to be concerned.

Thanks to an email from the Aleiens homebrew club, I just found out about the War of the Worts.  Once I saw the mail, I realized that despite all the brewing, reading, tasting and even the coursework I have been doing, I have yet to actually enter a competition.  Well, that ends now.  I took a quick look at what I have in process, what I already have kegged/bottled and where it fits into the BJCP categories.   I have entries ready for the following categories:

18A - Belgian Blond

The Belgian blond I will be entering in competition was brewed from a batch of pilsener wort that I picked up from Iron Hill Brewery in Maple Shade, NJ.  They recently brewed a batch of their barleywine, and were kind enough to invite area homebrewers over to collect the weaker second runnings.  Of course, in this case weaker was a relative term, as my batch still weighed in at a healthy 1.065OG before I boosted it a little bit with some extra fermentables.  Add some Saaz and a couple other mystery hops, and we're well on our way to a Belgian blond.

14B - American IPA

At the most recent BrewJersians meeting we sampled a dozen or so commercial IPAs.  The goal of the tasting was to get an idea of what we wanted to see in an IPA recipe that the club is going to brew on the 31st.  Well, I couldn't wait!  Last weekend I got the fever for some citrusy hops, so I brewed up a batch of a cascade-crazy IPA.  With a starting gravity of 1.058 it is on the low end of the range for an American IPA, but the color and gravity fit right into the guidelines for the style, so I'm going to go ahead and enter it.

12B - Robust Porter

My final entry in the competition will be a robust porter.  This is a recipe that I have had in development for a while, and will eventually form the base for my smoked porter.  It's pretty good, almost inky black with a beautiful tan head.  It weighs in around 5.8% ABV, and is made from a rich palette of black, chocolate, caramel and mystery malt.  Already in the secondary, this one will be kegged in a couple days.

Wish me luck!

Tonight I'll be headed out to the first meeting of the year for the BrewJersians, a homebrew club located in south Jersey.  The meeting is at 6:30pm at the High St. Grill in Mt. Holly.  To find more info on the club, visit their website at www.brewjersians.com.  Seems like a great group, and I'll be sure to post a follow up after the meeting.