This is the first tripel I have brewed on my 52 brews. Tripels are a Belgian style and are generally pale and strong. The archetypal triple is Westmalle and my personal favourite. A good tripel should be strong fruity and flavoursome yet dry and clean. Being pale, tripels (I think) lend themselves very well to ‘seasoning’ with some citrus peels.
The peels I will be using are:
1. Navel Orange
2. Mandarin
3. Lime
4. Lemon
5. Grapefruit
6. Clementine
7. Pomelo
You would have heard of most of these but maybe not pomelo. My first experience of pomelo was when one of my racking team came to my office with what he described as ‘space fruit’. I had to agree that in its plastic wrapper and protective net, it did look like something from outer space. It apparently originated from galaxy of Lidl which is just past the tyre centre on the left. The skin of the pomelo struck me as made for brewing as it produces gallons of oily zest.
For the hops I am going for Cluster and Chinook which are both highly citrus and will add to the punch of the peels. I have resisted the temptation to use abbey or trappist yeast on this brew because they have a ‘habit’ of reducing the contribution of hops to the aroma.
Malt will of course be just pale ale with enough glucose to dry the beer up but not so much that it castrates the yeast. OG 1085 and an ambitious PG of 1008.
5 comments:
I general love beers with zesty citrus peel zings to them. Without the Belgian yeast, what is it that'll classify this under the 'tripel' heading, strength and paleness?
what yeast? and I would argee with Mark it will be somewhat south of the style without a phenolic yeast character.
I used Belgian strong ale yeast. It's estery and slightly spicy but doesn't eat hop aroma as voraciously as the abbey and trappists. In terms of hop notes the beer should be in the St Feuillien Tripel mold.
How about adding Seville orange peel to make an 8 peel version? Wins hands down for intense zestiness than any other citrus fruit
Nice suggestion thyme. It's a bit late for this one as I brewed it on Saturday. I'm looking at citrus peel for an upcoming seasonal cask brew so Seville is a strong candidate for that.
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