I brewed an amazing Belgian Tripel off the yeast cake of a Belgian Patersbier I brewed a few months back. This beer is delicious and stands right up there with 5 different commercial tripels that i recently purchased to compare notes. (tough job, I know) i used a belgian high gravity yeast (wyeast 3787 trappist high gravity) for the patersbier, which a a low alcohol session beer found in some remote towns in Belgium. It's really not a difficult beer to brew, single malt, lightly hopped and low gravity, most of the flavor develops from the yeast. Super light and super citrusy is how it's best described, but enough of that, on to the tripel.

Pilsen malt- Dingemans 12 lbs

Cara pils 1lb

Belgian candi sugar -white 1lb 15 miutes

.75 oz summit 60 minutes-bittering

1 oz saaz @ 5 minutes -aroma

mash in 5 gallons 165 degree water, target mash is 150 or just below. if you come in too low, just extend the mash time in 15 min increments.

I shoot for a lower target with belgian beers because i like to bring out the malty profile.

sparge out with 180 degree water at the rate of 1 gallon into the kettle every 12 minutes.

your pre boil should be close to 7 gallons, i lose a lot in the boil, so i shoot for 7 preboil, nothing wrong with a little extra beer if you finish with more than 5 gallons:)

bring to a boil, when hotbreak settles, add summit and follow boil additions above.

cool, pour cooled wort into existing yeast cake from recently bottled patersbier.

this is a beer i secondary due to the large amount of yeast i'm pouring the beer onto in the primary.

i fermented for 3 weeks, racked to a secondary for 3 weeks and then bottled,

i am 12 weeks in and the beer just keeps getting better and better, i need to keep my hands off of it for a while and let it age.