Hales H4

COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION
Sometimes you have to let the brewers have some fun. The Quadruppel was that beer for us this year. I wanted to produce a big barrel aged beer for the 2010 holiday season. A beer this big has a monster mash and is a challenge to keep from getting stuck. The malt that we wanted to play with the most in this beer was Special B. It left the beer with a lovely purple-reddish hue that affected not only the beer but the lacing. Add in a little Cara-Vienna for some light caramel notes, some Cara-Pils for mouthfeel and hint of chocolate malt to tie it all up, and the beer was almost complete. We decided to use liquid Belgian candy sugar, two different versions in fact; each with their own interesting flavor additions. The last touch in the wort mix was a little bit of Turbinado sugar, a final boost to the starting gravity. We hopped it with Goldings because I love Goldings. While more of a traditional English hop, they’re used often in Belgian beers and can give a nice spicy-fruity character. In fermentation we used the same yeast blend that had been employed in our “IX Gold”. It is a blend of three different Belgian strains: two Trappist and one Belgian ale. On top of that just to make sure the beer was able to finish as far as we wanted, we also added Champagne yeast. We put both batches unblended into whiskey and brandy barrels as well as stainless steel. Then we sat on them for a year.

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