Duvel clone

[rossiski]

Good idea so waiting till like day 4 or 5 should work if I use a large starter and enough yeast.

[brewinhard]

I will usually let my eyes be the judge on this one. When I get about 10-20 bubbles per minute in the airlock and the krausen has dropped a bit (depending on yeast strain), then I know it is time for the first sugar addition.

[rossiski]

OK, I brewed the batch today and hit all of my numbers with the exclusion of the sugar. I have it in my fermentation chamber at 66 degrees and will bump it up 2 degrees a day until a I reach 80. I am going to split my sugar additions into 2 consecutive days as fermentation slows. Now on to my question...
When I hit my FG (1.007) does this beer need to condition in a secondary for a while prior to kegging or bottling or is it good to go once I achieve my FG? I brewed 10 gallons so I plan to bottle 5 gallons with champagne bottles and corks. This batch will condition in my basement until April.The other 5 gallons will end up in my kegerator rotation at some point.

[rossiski]

After the fermentation schedule mentioned above my beer attenuated down to 1.000 in 8 days. I am shocked by this. Anyone else seen attenuation like this with the 570 white labs strain. Again the recipe had 20% sugar in it added to the fermentor in two batches after krausen started to fall.

[brewinhard]

I have had my last golden strong with the wyeast version of this strain get down to 1.002 FG. I was lucky that my buddy had also recently brewed one as well that stopped at 1.016 so we blended them together in the keg via a jumper for the perfect blend!

[rossiski]

The taste is actually pretty good. I am going to lager it for 2-3 weeks and see what happens. I guess if I re brew it I may go with 15% sugar.

[brewinhard]

Good thinking. Bumping up your mash temp by a couple degrees may also be necessary if lowering the sugar amount does not make much of a difference.