I brewed that Tripel up in what seems weeks ago (which it was).

I kept it comfortably fermenting at 68F for a week and a half.  When John and I (9/14/07) brewed up his Maple Porter I racked it over to secondary and checked the gravity with my hydrometer.  To my surprise despite having pitched a solid 1.5L starter and oxygenating the wort, my gravity was only 1030.  The taste was pretty good, definitely Belgian funky but not too much which is what I was hoping for.  However, it was still on the sweet side due to that 1030 gravity.  I moved the carboy to my basement where it was about 74F, figured since I still had plenty of yeast in the solution it would maybe start to ferment again at the higher temp.

It started bubbling again a day later.

Now more than two weeks later the yeast has settled and the bubbling is done.  I’ll be taking a gravity reading tomorrow night hopefully and see where it stands.

If that hasn’t lowered my gravity to 1015ish then I may try some champagne yeast and put it in bottles straight like that.  We’ll see where the gravity is tomorrow night and I’ll post my results and strategy from that evaluation.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I promised John to rack his Maple Porter to secondary when I got back.  Beer chores and more beer chores…. such a demanding hobby.

Here is a picture of the beer with the blow off tube earlier during fermentation.  The second photo is of my partially complete log sheet for the Belgian Tripel.  It’s not the best quality photo but I’ll be putting together a separate post about my record keeping in the future and I’ll link a copy of the file then for anyone who wishes to use it or modify it.