The Faustian bargain

If you ever have the chance to make a deal with The Devil please do your homework in advance. Many folkloric heroes and villains have had just this chance and for most of them they ended up paying The Devil his due. There is however one form of infernal pact a home brewer can make that will benefit everyone involved, sans their liver health of course, the Belgian Golden Strong ale. 

One of the gents I'm in the CR Beer Nuts with has said to me on multiple occasions that he likes to make a few really big beers in the fall to make it through the cold Iowa winters. Last winter was rather mild but the premise is sound regardless. My love of Belgian beers led me to brew a Duvel type clone which I named... Mephisto's Unholy Covenant . This was not without peril however as there are many ways that this brew could have been screwed up by a novice like me. 

 The inspiration

Start with good base malt (Belgian Pilsner), pitch enough healthy yeast (WLP530) and control temps as best as you can. Now, I don't have any experience with making a yeast starter so I did brew a smaller Belgian Pale ale and pitched the Golden Strong onto the healthy yeast cake. Lucky for me that the the pale ale was very nice all by it's lonesome. I called it:


Mephisto's Fructification 

Brew Date 10/30/2011

5.5 Gallon batch

Mashed at 152 @60 min

OG 1.051

FG 1.010
27 IBU

79% measured attenuation

Grains

Belgian Pilsner	8 lbs, 0 oz
Caravienne Malt	1 lbs, 0 oz
Aromatic Malt (Bel)	0 lbs, 8 oz
Biscuit	0 lbs, 8 oz

Hops 

Tettnang 3.9%	1.5 oz @ 60 mins
Tettnang 3.9%	.5 oz @ 20 mins

Pitched one vial of WLP530 at 62 degrees and it went up to about 65 degrees ambient. 14 days in primary. Racked to secondary for 3 days and bottled. I didn't wait for this one to clear as this yeast is crazy hard to get to drop bright. I bottled to 2.5 volumes in Grolsch swing-tops because it was what I had free at the time. 

Once I racked to secondary I brewed up the beast:

Mephisto's Unholy Covenant

Brew Date 11/13/2011

5.5 Gallon batch

Mashed at 147 @90 min

OG 1.082

FG 1.006
28 IBU

92% measured attenuation

Grains

Belgian Pilsner	12 lbs, 8 oz
Munich 10L	0 lbs, 10 oz
White Wheat Malt	0 lbs, 10 oz
Invert Sugar (homemade)	2 lbs,  0 oz

Hops 

Northern Brewer 9.4%	.75oz @ 60 mins

Pitched onto the cake from the Fructification at 65 degrees. Slow rise to about 78 degrees over a 10 day primary. I made 2 lb of invert syrup using citric acid on the stove top and put it into a sealed mason jar. I fed the wort with the sugar syrup about 25% a day starting on day 3 through day 7. Each addition made the airlock go nuts for about 6 hours and then died down again.

Racked to secondary after 10 days and cold crashed out in my garage at 28-35 degrees for about 2 weeks. Then I moved the carboy to the basement for a long secondary at ambient winter/spring temps. I bottled after 144 days (!) with 9 oz corn sugar and a half packet of Champagne yeast. 4 volumes Co2 in Belgian corked and caged bottles.

My tasting notes at bottling. "The yeast character is much subdued from the pale ale I did with the first beer. Smooth without a lot of grain or hops character. Body and mouthfeel is much fuller than I expected from a 1.006 beer"

I used this one in a tasting I helped put on at work a few weeks ago. It went over very well for a 10% beer. I had lots of comments that "this didn't taste like 10%".