Thai Basil Tripel

I've been lucky enough to live within a short drive of The Bruery since they opened in Orange County in 2008 and I've been a big fan pretty much since the beginning. While I love their funky and sour beers, I've also always been a huge fan of their Tradewinds Tripel, a Belgian-style tripel brewed with Thai basil and rice and have been wanting to brew my own version of it for a good while. It kept getting moved to the back burner, but I finally decided to take a stab at it. 

Several years back, Patrick Rue of The Bruery, was on one of the Brewing Network shows and he gave out the recipe. It's a pretty simple grain bill consisting of 2-Row, Dark Munich, and Flaked Rice. For yeast, they use their house strain, so the best option for a clone is to either harvest yeast from one of their bottles and grow it up to a pitchable amount or to use WLP570 (Belgian Golden Ale) from White Labs, which Patrick says that it's the closest commercial option out there. 

The magic in this beer though, of course, comes from the Thai basil. For the first batch of The Bruery's beer, they used Thail basil leaves and blossoms that had been growing in Patrick's back yard. Patrick recommended using a rate of 1/4 oz. of basil per 5 gallons of beer at flameout, with a majority of the addition coming from the blossoms rather than the leaves, as he believed the blossoms were most responsible for the beer's unique character. 

In most Tripels, a fairly large portion of sugar is added to lighten the body, but in The Bruery's Thai-inspired recipe, they use flaked rice instead. Unfortunately, when I went to buy the ingredients for my beer, I found out that my local homebrew shop doesn't carry flaked rice, so I made the decision to go with flaked corn in its place. Both serve the same purpose of lightening the body of the beer, although I've read the argument that flaked rice can provide more of a crispness while flaked corn can provide more creaminess. That may be the case, but I'm going for the flaked corn and I probably won't lose much sleep over it. 

It actually turns out that most grocery stores don't carry Thai basil, so I had to search around a bit to find it. I ended up making the trek to a nearby town that has a couple of Asian markets and found some there with lots of glorious little blossoms on it. (I also saw fish heads for sale, but I opted to pass on those for this beer.) I want the basil character in my beer to be a little more intense, so I decided to go heavy-handed, using close to 1/4 oz. in this little 2-gallon batch, with the ratio being something like 70% blossoms / 30% leaves. 

Same as my last batch, I decided to use the no-sparge process and I also pitched Clarity Ferm along with the yeast to turn this into an essentially gluten-free beer.  I had a small hiccup on this batch where I forgot to update the mash tun deadspace volume in BeerSmith, so I ended up adding more water than necessary which left me with a lower gravity beer than I intended. I increased my boil time which helped a bit, but I still fell pretty short of my target OG of 1.074, instead coming in at 1.065. Not a huge deal - I'll just end up with a slightly more sessionable Tripel. 

Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 2.1 gal
Estimated OG: 1.074 SG
Estimated Color: 5.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 26.2 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Fermentables:
72% - 2-Row
14.5% - Flaked Corn
10% - Dark Munich
3.5% - Acidulated Malt

Hops:
.15 oz. Warrior (Pellet, 15.8% AA) @ FWH - 22 IBUs
.75 oz. Saaz (Pellet, 3.6% AA) @ 5 minutes - 4.2 IBUs

Yeast:
White Labs WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale

Other:
.23 oz - Thai basil leaves and blossoms (added at flameout)
Clarity Ferm - pitched alongside the yeast

Water:
RO filtered water - added 2.5 grams of calcium chloride and 2.5 grams of gypsum to the strike water.

Mash:
Single-infusion @ 151 degrees (No-sparge)

Notes:
Brewed on 6/12/16.

Used the no-sparge method. 100% RO water with 2.5 grams of gypsum and 2.5 grams of calcium chloride in the mash.

Mash pH came in a little lower than my target at 5.18 pH.

I messed up and forgot to update mash tun deadspace to the correct number in BeerSmith, so I ended up with a higher pre-boil volume and a lower gravity than anticipated. Increased boil time to 100 minutes - still ended up with an OG of 1.065 when I was originally planning for 1.074. I'm hoping high attenuation will still get this beer into the mid-high 7% ABV range.