So Kochun and I brewed up a Belgian trippel yesterday and tossed it on top of the yeast cake from the Belgian singel that had just gone into secondary. The trippel itself was based on the recipe for “Third Nipple Trippel” from the Randy Mosher’s book Radical Brewing, but I really wanted to come up with a different name. As it turns out, it didn’t take too long for inspiration to strike.

Within 4 hours of pouring the sugary wort onto the yeast, insanely vigorous fermentation had begun and the airlock was bubbling so quickly that you could feel the current of CO2 hit your hand. I noticed that the frothy krausen was rising dangerously close to the lid of the bucket and it was around this time that I decided that placing a potentially explosive container of yeast and sugar water next to my couch was probably a bad idea. I moved the fermenter inside of my bathtub, and replaced the airlock with a thick blowoff tube. I recorded a short video of the setup just before I went to bed.

For several hours, the yeast strained against the confines of the bucket. At first the blowoff tube was able to handle the stress, but as the night wore on, the krausen rose into the tube and starting gumming up the works. Periodically, the tube would clog and pressure would rapidly build up inside the bucket until finally the clog was shot out of the tube in a burst that sounded like somebody sneezing through a straw into a glass of water. These eruptions grew more and more violent until finally, the bucket yielded to the caged god inside:

I like to imagine that the the beer was just trying to get back to its open fermentation Belgian roots. In any event, the violence and fury of its creation inspired the name. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Caged God Belgian Trippel.