Strata Lucida

Of interest to brewers only

I spent an inordinate amount of time over the weekend working up a comprehensive spreadsheet for calculating parti-gyle recipes. Parti-gyle is the ancient technique -- used by the Trappist monks of Belgium, among others -- of making two beers from a single mash. It's the process that resulted in Belgium's classic division of tripel, dubbel, and singel (or simple): the tripel is the first and strongest runnings, the dubbel in between, and the singel the weakest beer. I've revived the practice in the homebrew context, both because it's simpler and because it gives me a kick to brew in the medieval tradition. The spreadsheet just applies modern mathematical methods to the recipe formulation, making everything much easier on me.