Belgian Dark Strong recipe w/cal ale yeast (wlp001)

[Ihaveabig]

Have a Belgian kit but only some cal ale yeast. The kit has been sitting around so figured I'd just go with what I have and brew it. Just made a starter.
Any thoughts on the switch up? Will wlp001 work with all the pilsner malt and candi sugar?

[BDawg]

It will work, but the end product will taste somewhat unbalanced, due to low hopping levels and high amounts of malt.
The high attenuation, high phenolics, and high esters you'd get from Trappist yeast would normally balance that out.

WLP001 (California Ale) is a very clean yeast that attenuates well but not as well as a Trappist yeast, produces light esters,
nowhere to the level of the Trapist yeasts, and no phenolics by themselves.

I'd bump the hops up a great deal and turn this into something along the lines of a slightly darker version of an Arrogant Bastard type beer.
Hit it with some C-hops late (for flavor and aroma) and then guesstimate that the ibus from the kit were probably around 25 give or take.
Try to make the sum total of the 25 from the kit, plus whatever you add late, plus the bittering addition to all add up to about 80 IBUs, assuming the
gravity of the kit is around 1.080.

Let us know if you need help figuring out what that would take.
Tell us if you have more hops, what kind and how much and their %AA, and what if any, are the listed specs -- IBUs and Original Gravity (OG) -- of the kit.

HTH-

[Ihaveabig]

Great information, BDawg. Thank you very much. I have some falconer's flight I was thinking I would dry hop it with but didn't think of the need to up the hops in the boil. I have some cascade and centennial I'll throw in for flavor/aroma additions.
What percentage of my IBUs should come from the bittering addition?

[Ihaveabig]

Thanks for the info on the Belgian yeast balancing out the malt. That's good to know.

[BDawg]

What you want to do is work the calculations backwards.

Here's what I'd do:

1) make a blend of 2 oz each of the cascade and the centennial. That will be 4 oz. Mix it up well so it's a uniform blend.
2) figure adding an oz of the blend in at 20, 15, 10 and 5 mins.
3) Now we need to figure out how much bittering we'll need. We already estimate that the kit has 25 ibus worth of hops in it. Subtract that from our 80 IBU target.
4) Now add up the IBU contributions of each of the blends. If you break that down, it's 1/2 oz of each at each time. Add all those individual IBU calculations together and subtract that from 55 (which is 80 - 25) to get the number of IBUs left that you need to put in your bittering addition so that when you add everything together, the entire total is 80.
Once you do that, you keep trying different weights for a 60 minute addition until you hit that target.

Here's a decent free online hop calculator that lets you type in a bunch in a row : http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/

Post your findings here (as well as the %AA for the Cascade and the Centennial) and we'll review that you figured out the weights right.

[edit]
So here's an example:

Assume that the Cascade is 8% AA and the Centennial is 11%AA
Assume all hops are pellets.
Assume 25 IBUs from the kit.
Assume the kit gives an OG of 1.080
Assume you boil 5.5 gallons of wort to allow for trub losses, etc.

1/2 oz 11% Cent @ 20 = 10.25
1/2 oz 11% Cent @ 15 = 8.40
1/2 oz 11% Cent @ 10 = 6.14
1/2 oz 11% Cent @ 05 = 3.38
1/2 oz 08% Casc @ 20 = 7.46
1/2 oz 08% Casc @ 15 = 6.11
1/2 oz 08% Casc @ 10 = 4.46
1/2 oz 08% Casc @ 05 = 2.45 which is 48.65 IBUs from the late additions

55-48.65 = 6.35 IBU's needed in order to hit 80 total IBUs overall

So, playing with that calculator, you only need 1/4 oz of Casc at 60 mins which gives you 6.16 IBUs and is close enough.