This is my favorite beer…This is the beer that made me interested in brewing…I give it a 10…whats your review on Duvel?
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No one like Duvel? :lol: …im just joking
It’s one of my top three favorite beers. I have brewed BGS style 9 times in the last several years in obeisance to it. I give it a 9/10, as sometimes the imported bottles are stale or abused by the time I slam the Duvels into my liver.
I like it a lot when someone else buys it. I would rather have a Westmalle tripel, or a St. Bernardus 12 for the same money so I rarely buy it.
For the price I would pick Delerium Tremens instead of Duval because of the sweet aroma and smooth finish. May be unrelated to post but whenever people pickup Duval for a party, there is always Pirat and Delerium Tremens near by and I alway jump for the pink elephant.
Duvel is an awesome beer, but +1 to the above. I would also include Northcoast Pranqster as an afforable option for a BGSA, but even though the style guidelines say differently, I think Pranqster is more of a tripel, which I don’t like as much as BGSA’s if I am bit by that particular drinking bug. Duvel is awesome because its super dry and crisp, without much alcohol heat.
If you develop/have decent brewing chops, you can make a BGSA as good or better than it, for way cheaper…all about good quality floor-malted continental pilsner, a proper pitch of yeast, and ferment schedule (low, then high to attenuate all the way)…oh, and proper aging/patience :cheers:
Yep - DT – Delereim Tremens - Is awesome. Had it on tap in St Louis lately. Need to do a side by side against Duvel to see if it would sway me away from Duvel.
St Bernardus and Westmalle don’t make Belgium Golden Strong ales, BTW. Don’t think that’s wut you were trying to say, but just for the record.
As far as homebrewing BGS’s, the two most common and almost-automatic responses you will get from judges is: “not dry enough,” and “not carbed enuf.”
I have done 10 of em now, and can tell you it is almost impossible to carb/dry em out as much as Duvel. But keep in mind, when I package (keg—> bottle) I do so via a cobratap and tube (not via a beergun). I can’t even Imagine trying to carbonate this style “naturally,” (bottle/yeast carb).
Wait, why not? If I’m going for crazy high carb in a beer (BGSA/trip/quad/saison), I would almost prefer to bottle condition it because I can dial it in perfectly with measuring the priming sugar and not risk losing any carb from a keg to faucet->beer gun/faucet->bottle (?)
…because I would be terrified to try to hit that fine line between “perfect carb level for BGS” (IMO, 4.0 psi), and “bottle bombs.”
I believe, from what I’ve read, that you can bottle hi-carb beers by using thick-walled bottles; but most of the bottles I tend to salvage are the cheapy thin-walled ones.
well if you are putting all this time and energy into a great beer dialed in to the PERFECT carb level, isn’t spending $1/750ml bottle worth it!? :cheers:
750 ml bottles are very cool I recommend using plastic corks that you can push in by hand, if you do 9or bottle caps - whichever are called for.
As to the labor involved in this beer – I would say it is even more laborious than a lager.
However, I enter a few of my beers into competitions, and they don’t accept 750 ml bottles. I don’t intend to carbonate one six-pack for comps and keg the rest.
On top of which… I never was very good at predicting carb level by amt of priming sugar added to bottling bucket. Keg->bottle always was way more practical for me (in general).
So, going by your labor statement earlier: If I’m gonna spend this much time/effort in a batch of beer, I want to be able to dial the carb level in (at least in the keg).
Definitely a solid beer. I tend to brew them a little less carbed.
I tend to drink more saisons and tripels than BGSAs.
