Sour Belgian Dubbel Project

For the past three years I have been getting together with my friend Jesse to brew some sort of sour beer. We always brew some sort of a 10 gallon batch of Belgian Ale, and then split the batch. One half ferments out with a standard Belgian ale strain, the second half we then transfer to a secondary and send it through some sort of extended fermentation to sour the beer.

Today we got together and bottled last years version. See the summary here. In addition we brewed this years batch. A more traditional style Belgian Dubbel. For the "sour" half we plan to transfer into secondary in about 7-10 days and sour using Wyeast 3763 Roselare Blend yeast. In addition we plan to incorporate some sort of oak into the process, potentially Cabernet soaked french oak...but we are still working out those details. Well here is the recipe.

10 Gallon Batch
90 Minute Boil

Grains
21 lbs of Belgian Pilsner Malt
2 lbs of Munich Malt
2 lbs of Weyerman Pale Wheat Malt
1 lb Aromatic Malt
1 lb Caravienne Malt
1 lb Special B Malt

Hop/Sugar Additions:
2.5 oz Styrian Goldings [4.6% ] (60 min)
0.5 oz Sytrian Goldings [4.6% ] (30 min)
1 oz Saaz, Czech [3.2 %] (15 min)
1 oz Saaz, Czech [3.2 %] (0 min) Hops
2.00 lb Candi Sugar (Dark Candi Inc Liquid) - end of boil

Yeast
Wyeast 1762 (2 packs with starter)

Numbers

Pre-Boil Gravity = 1.050 (takes into account just the grain bill)
OG = 1.082
FG = 1.015
ABV = 9%
IBU = 22

We had a little better efficiency than I was expecting and our OG was a little higher then expected. Might put the ABV just outside of the style guidelines, although a 9% Belgian Dubbel should be fine especially since we will be controlling the initial fermentation temp below 70.

Mash
8 gallons @ 152 for 90 minutes. As you can see from the picture above...we were pushing the limit on my all grain cooler system with 28 lbs of grain. If I brewed this again I would probably cut back the Pilsner malt to 18 lbs.

Sparge
10 gallons @ 200 for 60 minutes

Below is a photo of our Belgian Single Project (...which we were saying today is more like a Belgian Sour Blonde project). Will have to see what some carbonation does to the final soured version of the beer. My initial thought is the brett is certainly there, the beer is as dry as a bone, it just didn't turn out super sour/funky. I still think it's going to be one nice tasting beer though.