I have a little trouble getting my bearings when it comes to clone recipes, so maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. These things, after all, are facts:

- People buy “Brew Like a Monk” or “Brewing with Wheat” because they want to make a beer just like Chimay White or Schneider Aventinus, and I like it when people by my books. Although they don’t contain clone recipes, they have pretty much all the information you need to write your own.
- The least favorable review of BLAM at Amazon.com comes from a reader who was disappointed the book didn’t include clones recipes.
- Books like CloneBrews, 2nd Edition: Recipes for 200 Brand-Name Beers will consistently outsell mine.

I don’t expect that to change, so please don’t consider what follows sour grapes. The other day I flipped through the second edition of CloneBrews at the bookstore, curious what beers are included and about the recipe details. OK, and to see if they perpetuate the myth about clear candi sugar, a discussion we don’t need to revisit.

I was really surprised to see the yeast strain suggested for fermenting Westmalle Tripel is Wyeast 1214, for the simple reason that strain came originally from Chimay (a long time ago, so the Wyeast and Chimay versions wouldn’t be quite the same today). After all, Wyeast sells a strain that originated with Westmalle (3787). I was even more surprised to see Wyeast 1762 suggested as the second choice, since that one came out of Rochefort and its characteristic flavors and aromas are quite different.

(The quick and dirty technical details: Both 3787 and 1214 produce both more of the ester isoamyl acetate — banana and other fruits — and the phenol 4-vinyl guaiacol than 1762. Details.)

The bottom line is that were I trying to clone Westmalle Tripel I’d use Wyeast 3787, White Labs WL530 or see what I could talk Brewing-Science Institute out of.

And as long as I am at it, a few other suggestions. CloneBrews version would produce a 9% abv beer, although the Westmalle label says it is 9.5% and a bottle checked in a lab in 2004 was 9.6%. The CB recipe suggests aiming for a beer with 27 bittering units, while the lab-tested version had 39. And the recipe stipulates a starting gravity between 1.086 and 1.088, a finish at 1.015-1.016.

However, Westmalle begins at 1.081 (19.6 ºP) and finishes at 1.008 (2 ºP). That’s a lot drier, particularly coupled with the additional hops, and a lot more digestible.

I prefer the Westmalle approach. You might like a little sweeter (less attenuated) beer, which is OK. And which reminds me why I don’t mess with clone recipes.

The Brewery Ommegang sour beer mentioned in the previous post now has a name: Ommegang Zuur. Larry Bennett, the minister of propaganda, provides some details abut the beer brewed in collaboration with Liefmans in Belgium:

“It’s a blended Flemish Sour brown. It’s a blend of two Liefmans beers: Oud Bruin, which is open fermented and then aged 6-8 months, and Liefmans Cuvee Brut, a new, fairly dry, kriek-style beer coming from Liefmans. The Cuvee Brut begins with Oud Bruin, then sits on cherries and is aged for a year. It’s then blended with more Oud Bruin and Goudenband.”

The beers are blended to Ommegang’s specs. “The big difference is that Liefmans beers are aged in stainless steel, not wood,” Bennett explained in a email. “So there is less of the acidification caused by the many bugs living in the wood. Though it is still definitely a sour beer.”

Brewmaster Phil Leinhart went to Belgium last October to taste potential blends. The beer will be available on draft and in 750ml bottles beginning in July and likely for four months. “We recently received some of the first trial bottling and it’s pretty damn fantastic. We’re pretty jazzed up to get it out there,” Bennett wrote.

- Goose Island’s highly coveted Matilda will be available in eight western markets this month. The beer’s name pays tribute to the legend of Matilda — the story being that Countess Matilda of Tuscany (c1046-1115) lost a gold ring in the lake. When it was brought to the surface by a trout, she thanked God by endowing Orval Trappist monastery.

The Chicago-brewed beer has won numerous awards since it was introduced in 2005, at both the Great American Beer Festival and in the World Beer Cup. New markets include Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico.

Brewery Ommegang’s plan for 2010 includes six new releases as well as creations that will be available only at the brewery outside Cooperstown, New York.

A press release calls this the 2010 Innovation Program and backs up the rather bold name. Six beers will be released, one every two months. They’ll be in 750ml bottles and also available on draft.

Jan.-Feb. 2010: Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence Stout. Very slightly revised for the 2010 edition. In release.

March-April: Ommegang BPA (Belgian-style Pale Ale). 5.8% abv. 5 malts, 2 hops, and dry-hopped. Citrus & tropical fruit aromatics.

May-June: Ommegang Tripel (name not yet confirmed). Around 9%, spiced, in the test brew stages now.

July-Aug.: Ommegang Sour Ale. Around 6% ABV. Oud Bruin style beer made in collaboration with Liefmans of Belgium. Name TBD.

Sept.-Oct.: Ommegang Scotch Ale. A new Belgo-Scotch mash up. ABV, name and even recipe still to be confirmed.

Nov.-Dec.: Ommegang Adoration. Still 10% ABV, still malty, still big and spicy. But may be tweaked a bit.

Part two of this Innovation Program is the Exclusive Beer initiative. These are even more experimental small-batch beers which will be available only at the brewery. They will not be for sale. These are essentially pilot batches, available for “sampling” and enjoying at Ommegang. The first beer, a Belgian-ish porter, called “Porter, Sorter” is warm-cellaring as of week two of January, and should be released before the end of the month.

Ommegang also is aging several of its high-gravity beers in oak bourbon barrels, for further experiments and tasting.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve read several references that would indicate Belgian brewers the use “candi sugar,” the most recent being in The Naked Pint: An Unadulterated Guide to Craft Beer. No they don’t, not if you are talking about those rocklike hunks sold as “candy” or “candi” sugar in the United States.

I’d like you to buy Brew Like a Monk, but even more I’d like it if I didn’t have to keep reading “candi sugar” when we’re just talking about plain old sugar, so here’s an excerpt from Chapter 7:

To boost alcohol, fermentability, and produce what Belgians refer to as a “more digestible” beer, plain sucrose―the stuff you can buy at your local grocery store―works just as well as clear candi sugar (rocks). The dark, rummy character that comes from caramelized sugar is harder to duplicate, and certainly not by using American brown sugar. Here is a quick sugar primer:

Candi sugar: References to “candi sugar” when Belgian brewers began using such an ingredient most often described caramel syrup, not the clear to dark rocks sold in the United States as “Belgian candi sugar.” The rocks you liquefy by tossing into a kettle are made by lowering cotton strings with seed crystals into hot solutions of sugar. What we really care about is the sugar itself.

Today, when brewers at Westmalle and Orval refer to candi sugar, they specify using it in liquid form. Most other brewers, Trappist and secular, who once used “clear candi sugar” have replaced it with sucrose or dextrose. As well as adding white sugar to the kettle, Rochefort includes cassonade brune in its recipes. While that translates to “brown sugar,” Candico in Antwerp produces something much different than Americans think of in making “candysugar” (its term) and cassonade brune: “granulated crystals, obtained from cooling down strongly concentrated sucrose-solutions boiled at very high temperatures.” Most of Candico’s sales to confectionary producers, biscuit factories, and breweries are “candysugar” in syrup form.

Sucrose: The basic white sugar you buy at A&P comes from sugar beets or sugar cane; both produce the same end product. They are crushed, dissolved in water, and the raw syrup is boiled down to concentrate it to a point where some fraction crystallizes. The remaining syrup is separated from what is now 95% pure sugar. The crystals are further processed several times to increase its purity, eventually yielding the pure white crystals.

Brown sugar: To produce brown sugar in North America, the crystals are left much smaller than for white sugar, and the syrup or molasses is not washed off completely. Many producers have in fact instituted processes in which they make brown sugars by blending refined white crystal sugar with molasses.

Dextrose: The “righthand” version of glucose, a monosaccharide derived from converted starches, much as what happens when mashing malted grain. Dextrose can be made from a variety of cheap sources, including corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes. Belgian brewers used glucose by the nineteenth century.

Invert sugar: Glucose and fructose together make up sucrose. When fructose is “inverted” by hydrolysis, the resulting invert sugar is theoretically easier for yeast to ferment.

Caramelized sugar: Caramelization occurs when a sugar molecule is heated to a high-enough temperature to begin to break down and create the characteristic flavors of caramel. Sugar producers are extremely careful not to subject sugars to temperatures high enough to cause caramelization, because it would introduce these flavors and cause product loss (any sugar that is caramelized is no longer sugar, so it can’t be crystallized). Caramel syrups are sold in Europe, giving brewers a variety of choices not available in the United States. Many American brewers use dark candi (rocks) as a substitute, but while the darkest provide a rummy, unrefined character, they don’t come close to replicating the caramelized flavors found in darker Belgian ales.

The current issue of Imbibe magazine has a list of what it calls the best 99 (really 100 and really several lists) bottled beers in the world.

Good beers, but of course we know any list of “bests” is still just a list. I’ve rattled on about that enough.

But in case you like I noticed Ommegang’s Three Philosophers hanging out with the barrel-aged beers and thought, wow, I need to get some of that . . . you can’t. Three Philosophers remains wood-free.

However, I’m glad I asked because Brewery Ommegang chief information guy Larry Bennett emailed back that, “We just put some Abbey Ale and some of our Adoration Ale (a brand new 10% abv Belgian Winter Ale; dark, strong, with 5 spices,) in barrels.”