So a local brewery makes one of my favorite beers, a 10% ABV belgian strong ale they call DNR. I love the stuff. I was reading a thread on HBT and they talked about writing breweries and asking for recipes. So I did just that. I got a wonderful response and my email was forwarded to the head brewer. I wrote him with my ideas on what I thought the recipe had and I got an email back this morning. I was close on my idea of the recipe!! He didn't divulge the recipe in full BUT gave me some helpful hints on how to get close. Both of the guys that emailed me were super nice and gracious.

When I get home and get on qbrew I'll work up a recipe and go from there. I got a couple more brews coming down the pipe but this one will get started soon, prolly in March.

So, feel free to write your local breweries about the beer you like!! don't just ask for the recipe, show that you put some work into tasting it and trying to figure it out. The worst that can happen is they don't give you any feedback, oh well, nothing lost.

I played around on BMW to see where I got with this. Here is the recipe I sent him:




Here is the info I got back:



Using that and my knowledge of this beer, I put it into BMW.

http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/recipe/3d5307f2/

I made a few guesses on things (styrian goldings for the hop, c20 for the lower crystal malt) and the wheat and candi sugar amounts are based on the percentages given.

I plan to do a tripel with the same yeast and just pitch this beer onto that yeast cake. BMW shows the FG too high but if I can get it down to 1.020, I will be right on as far as ABV. My pipeline is full enough that I can wait these two out pretty easily.

that is really cool. I have heard of people on the BN (brewing network) podcasts doing just this and getting varying degrees of responses. some are really cool and give you the exact recipe, and other don't divulge squat.

personally, I think the effort you put in makes all the difference. how neat is it (IMO) for a brewer to have a fan like his beer so much he is trying to figure it out down to a granular level? seems like a huge compliment to me.

what brewery is it BTW?

The brewery is Coop Ale Works. Love nearly everything they make!!

http://www.coopaleworks.com/index/

The beer is DNR - http://www.coopaleworks.com/beers/dnr/

They finally put it in bottles but at about $15 a pop it's hard to convince the wife it's worth it lol. This was the beer that got me off the BMC stuff and convinced me there was good beer out there.

i just realized there will be no way I can mash this lol. My 5 gallon pot barely fits 7# of grain and 4.25 gallons of water. I may try a dual mash, one with the pot and the other with my bottling bucket or something. Either that or make this a mini mash and add 1# or 2# of DME to get where I need.

hmmm...that is a huge grain bill! bigger pot in your future?

I think scaling back the base grains then adding the DME would be the most practical way to hit your target though. totally doable, and a lot cheaper than $15 per bottle

does your wife like it? I was pleasantly surprised when mine liked Chimay, so we treat ourselves with some of that from time to time. but if I was the only one that liked the beer...well, let's say it definitely needs some convincing to go over even $10 for a bottle!

What about just using less water and doing a sparge? Might take some finagling, but should be doable.

natty, she isn't a fan. she doesn't really like belgians at all. It makes me sad.

Jon, that's an idea. I could fit the grain with a 1.5qt/lb ratio and just sparge to get the needed volume. I would need to mash in a different vessel though as my other large pot only holds 1.5 gallons. Can I sparge one gallon at a time and heat more water inbetween?

Hey cardinalsfan. That is pretty cool. Good luck with the brew.

Cards, that's really excellent. It's a truly inspiring story - maybe I'll try to get an email translated to Italian and ask Teo Musso about his recipe for Baladin Nora