This is our second test beer as a candidate for barrel aging. We followed the recipe from BYO’s Belgian Abbey Style of the Month article (although the link is apparently dead). We also got a little help from our buddy Ty on this batch!

Results

Overview

• Starting gravity (actual)
  • 1.066
• Starting gravity (expected)
  • 1.075
• Final gravity (actual)
  • 1.020
• Final gravity (expected)
  • 1.013-1.018

The first tasting of the Tipsy Trappist was disappointing and flat.

It’s terrible!

Merry Christmas

Update: Still bad after a few months. For what I think is the first time ever with a homebrew, I even poured out a few of the remaining bottles.

Recipe

Malt

• 5.5 lbs light liquid malt extract
• 1 lb Pale Lager malt**
  (used German Pilsner)**
• 3 lbs 20L Munich malt**
  (used a 50-50 mix German Munich 10L and 30-35L)**
• 1 lb Wheat malt**
  (used Malted White Wheat)**
• 0.5 lb Biscuit malt

Hops

• 2.5 oz Styrian Goldings 5.5% with no notes on boil order**
  (used 2.5oz Tettnanger 6.3%)**

Yeast

• Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey

Other

• 1 lb dark candi sugar**
  (used 16oz premium extra dark belgian candy syrup)**

Brewing Notes

Timeline

• Brewed
  • November 23, 2012
• Transferred
  • N/A
• Bottled
  • December 15, 2012
• Tasted
  • December 24, 2012

This recipe is a partial mash, which we’ve never done before but doesn’t seem too complicated: Partial Mashing (BeerSmith). Maybe that was our downfall or we weren’t careful enough with keeping it clean.

We sparged for 90 minutes in 2 gallons of water at 155 degrees in a blue picnic cooler. Then added up to a total of 6 gallons to start the wort.

Oh, and it rained so we improvised some shelter.