Brewing Granfalloons Belgian Tripel

My new brewing friend recently received amazing news: not only was he accepted into grad school at LSU, but furthermore, he received a fellowship grant and will in effect be paid to go to college (congrats!). On the one hand, I am very excited for him and wish him all the best. On the other hand, I am despondent that my new brewing location will shortly be no longer accessible. Looking at the calendar, my brewing partner and I decided we had just enough time to brew one last batch before he leaves in early June.

Although my brewing partner expressed interest in brewing a Belgian, I had my trepidations due to a complete lack of experience in brewing anything in that broad definition of a style. Throwing caution to the wind and stepping off the cliff of experimentation, we decided to go for broke on what may be our last batch of beer together. Our decision was helped along by fortune dropping a tripel recipe into my lap.

Brewing a Belgian proved to be only slightly different than brewing a traditional ale. We had to monitor the mash temperature a little more closely and remember to dissolve the candi sugar before adding it to the mash, but there was nothing too disorienting about the process thanks to my experience brewing other styles.

The wort was a couple degrees warmer than I would have like when we pitched the yeast, but a careful transportation of the carboy to the basement and the yeast took over less than twelve hours later, producing tempestuous activity and the brew continued to ferment vigorously for quite some time.

Although I am sad to see my friend go, I am excited for him to begin the next stage in his life. I am also excited for the two liquid mementos we brewed before his departure: the Bagombo IPA, which we will be bottling tomorrow and the Granfalloons Belgian, which will experience different storage conditions in our cellars separated by 2,358 miles (an interesting experiment in itself), but it is good to have put the effort into creating these ales together before our lives diverge.