And the Dubbel

My, my. Pours with a beautiful head--lush ruby-tinged brown--sort of a deep, deep translucent amber when held up to the light, but looks like a duskier, opaque brown in a dimmer setting. It's pretty deep colored really. The nose is caramelly malt, delicate chocolate, and a range of wonderful fruits: passion fruit, apples, banana, and raisins or dates. The finish is a real key to this beer. I love that it's fairly rich on the palate, and moderately sweet, but then the finish dries out, leaving a lingering hoppiness and some roasty dryness from the malt. I think this suggests that a very small dose of Carafa II would be a productive move. I was going to hop with Styrian Goldings, keeping them almost all for bittering. Maybe a half ounce with 8 or 10 minutes left. If that. This is all about the malt and I've got to restrain myself when I have the urge to throw hops into that damned thing.

Should go from 1063 down to 1010, for about 7% abv. I think I should stay within hailing distance of the Mosher recipe. Maybe I'll do the same IBU's, but with Styrians instead of his Northern Brewers. My impulse is to get a couple more dark malts in there. So maybe I'll boost the batch size up with just a little bit of wheat malt for head and a little more caramel and dark malts. I'll do 2 or 3 ounces of Carafa, perhaps, plus a little Caramel Pils and a liberal use of Special B. Mosher has "one pound of Belgian medium-dark crystal." I'll make that half CaraMunich and half Special B I guess.

Here's a draft recipe I'll touch up later:

6 lbs Belgian Pale
3 lbs Munich
1 lb jaggery
.5 lbs Wheat
.5 lbs CaraMunich
.5 lbs Special B
.5 lbs Aromatic
.5 lbs Caramel Pils
2 oz. Carafa II

Bitter with 1.5 ozs of Styrians but check the IBU's on the pouch.
Mash around 150? Not sure. I mean, it should have complex residual sugars, but I need it to get down to about 1010 too. With all those rich malts, it ought to have body anyway.