Dubbel Entendre

🚨 NEW BEER 🚨

Our newest beer is a bit of a homage to one of my favourite beer styles, a Belgian Dubbel ale. I'm very inspired by the beers and beer culture of Belgium and taking on such a style was pretty daunting. To start with, the malt base. I used our usual base malt of Maris Otter Pale Ale malt, along with a fair bit of Munich malt for an extra golden, orange element to the colour and a malty, grainy flavour on top of the relatively neutral Maris Otter. As well as this there was some wheat malt for a sweeter grain flavour. As well as this I added some glucose syrup to ape the sugar additions of the Belgian masters. I wanted to add a lot of fermentables (it's a strongish brew) but not add to much colour, so I went with glucose. This was added in the mash. Now for the really weird bit! I decided to add to the funkiness of the brew by having an extra long mash. 15 hours in fact! By mashing overnight I hoped to add a slight sour element to the brew. It was a bit tense as anyone that's had to move spent malt after a few days will tell you it goes pretty rank pretty quickly. I made efforts to make sure the mash was filled right to the top to minimise oxygen pickup as oxygen in the bacterial mix could have led to some vomit like flavours. Anyway the next day I was pretty happy with how the mash was smelling so proceeded to run off as normal. In the copper I added some coriander seeds and a fair amount of fresh orange peel. Hop additions was mostly Belgian Challenger hops, then it was left to ferment using a Saison strain of yeast. Fermentation was slower than usual, and after 9 days it was struggling to reach the right gravity so I added a little of our usual ale yeast just to get over the finish line. A couple of days later it was ready to chill.

The resulting deep golden ale packs flavours of oranges, cloves, coriander and dried fruits. Warming fruitcake notes balanced by a blackberry leaf sweetness from Challenger hops. Fermented with Belgian Saison yeast and a slight sharpness on the finish (from the overnight mash) to balance the intense citrus sweetness.

Look out for this one, out from next week.