I am trying to mimc a Belgian White from the Allagash brewing company
- posted
18 years ago
I am trying to mimc a Belgian White from the Allagash brewing company
Find some of those "carbonation drops", they look like little orange pieces of hard candy, I think they're made by a company called Cooper...pretty equivelent to Belgian Candy Sugar, you can use those, i forget, 1 or 2 drops per 12 oz bottle.
You can use the BCS at bottling time, just use an equivelent to 3/4 cup of corn sugar, boil in some water & add it to your bottling container, siphon the beer on top of it & go. Or just take a guess & add 2-4 pieces of BCS to each bottle, then fill. I've actually done this before & it worked pretty sweet, the first time I only put 2 pieces...not enough, poor carbonation.
You can use either method or both, add it to the boil, add it to the boil & at bottling time, BCS is VERY fermentable sugar and is most often added during the boil, it creates a lot of the caramel "Belgian beer" characteristic.
At bottling time you can use any yeast you want, but if you want to maintain a certain flavor profile, stay with the same yeast you used to ferment with. I'm not sure why they would recommend Champaign yeast after racking, all that will do is attenuate more sugar giving you a higher ABV and it may cause over carbonation at bottling time, consider the difference between a champaign bottle & a beer bottle...that's just an accident waiting to happen...I've NEVER added more yeast after racking OR before bottling & have never had carbonation problems (except when I used to little sugar, but that was my fault, not the yeast).
Adding more (of the same) yeast at bottling time will definitely not hurt, it just makes sure you have viable, active yeast to create carbon dioxide in the bottle. Unless you're lagering your beer for several months or storing it in secondary outside of it's temp range, you should be fine.
Now if you'll excuse me...I have a bottle of Honey Porter to get to the bottom of....
Oh...and here's a link on how to make your own BCS =)
Kent
I've had a lot of experience with Candi sugar and the only conclusion that I can come up with is that it is a waste of money using it. Candi sugar does not contribute any flavour to your beer so you may as well save your money and just use cane sugar.
If money is more important than style or taste, then just toss simple table sugar into the boiling wort cuz it may be acidic enough to invert the sugar in the boil. But any unexpected change in chemistry is sure to detract from the authenticity of the style of Belgian you are trying to achieve. Also, if the recipe is calling for Candi in the fermentation stage then it is the invert sugar, or simple table sugar that is hydrolyzed, table sugar transformed into glucose and fructose, which speeds needed fermentation.
Wild
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