Beer Forum

I tried to make a rochefort 8 clone and I used white labs trappist yeast that was prepped in a 2L starter. I used pure O2 before pitching and I held the fermentation at 70-72F for 10 days. OG was 1.090, and after 10 days it stopped at 1.044, so i pitched a pack of cooprs dry ale yeast but nothing happened so i kegged it. any tips how to make a better clone.

Now if i could only get it to meow everytime he bangs his head I could retire

What brand of malt extract did you use?

Some brands are much more fermentable than others.

i used b3 ingredients: 11lb pils, 1.5lb belgian candy syrup, 1.0lb cane sugar, some steeping grains

I had a go....

did my boil (an extract batch with some specialty grains), split the wort into quarters in sanitised containers.

Aerated my yeast only, and pitched into a quarter of the wort, heaps of yeast, not much wort, so the thing went crazy. Kept it in the fridge at about 18C.

24 hours later, added another quarter of the wort and continued to add wort over the next couple of days and it finished out pretty well. Tpwards the end of the week, let the temp come up to about 20C - stayed in the fridge for about 3-4 weeks.

OG was 1102, used Safbrew T-58, FG was 1018. I think about 11%.

It was a bit tangy at Christmas - drinkable, but I'm giving it a few months to settle down - see how it goes.

Took the idea from the BN show about R'fort and HB Chefs description of the brewing process over there. Seemed to work pretty well.

Kev

did you reboil each addition before adding

With extract full attenuation can be hard to achieve. First suggestion use more sugar to make up the wort.(15-20%). Also getting some two row and steeping it in the water and extract at around 149-154 I believe( see jamil show belgian golden strong ale, he explains the process there) the enzymes in the 2 row will further break down the sugars in the malt extract and make it more fermentable. Also you can try adding beano for the same reason. Check out that jamil show to double check the process.

I didn't reboil before each addition - I was pretty happy that my cointainers were sanitised and didn't really have the time.

I used a Muntons pils extract(it was hopped but I figured a 70 min boil would remove most of that).

My recipe was for a 5 litre batch(yes a small batch, but it was an experiment!)

780g muntons pils extract
180g liquid lager extract
500g pale liquid extract

90g crystal
20g choc malt
100g light lager grain - all three steeped for 40 mins @ 65(ish)C

100g dry wheat extract
110g homemade candi sugar (based on the Graeme Sanders recipe)

9g Goldings(6.6%)
2g coriander seeds -I'd heard these were good as a preservative

Boiled everything for 70 mins
60 mins added all hops - I calculated 31 ibu
15 mins candi + coriander added
0 mins - all done

T-58 yeast - only this was aerated.

split into litre bottles, added every 24 hours blah blah blah

OG: 1102
FG: 1014(out of the bottle)

Not awesome, but a good experiment to get a beer this big down nearly as low as my normal beers. It's still aging, but will give it a go in late May, early June - I'm saving it to'wet the baby's head' when my wife and i have our first bub. We'll see how it finishes up.

Kev