My first attempt at Dogfish Head 120 with pics!

Here is a little background on this brew. I was planning on doing this a few weeks ago when I would have had some help. Unfortunately my order for my 15 gallon fermenter was lost or misplaced so they say but it finally came just almost a month later. So anyway I really wanted to get this bad boy under my belt and it was now or hold off for another month so I decided what the hell. I listened to the show on TBN a few times and studied all the recipes that I could find and they were all really almost identical. I really wanted to do a 10 gallon batch but with the shipment problem with the fermenter I held off picking up a larger pot. But when it came time to brew there was no way in hell I was brewing this by myself and only doing a 5 gallon batch so I decided to push my system to the limit. This is probably not the best beer to test your systems limit but hey isn’t that half the fun? So I decided to try a 7.5 gallon batch. Doing so I had to make due with what I had and let me tell you this was a basement, kitchen stove and out side brew all at once!

I had the do this over two days since the total process took about 12-13 hours. Here is my step by step for day one. I didn’t take a pic of me making my own amber malt but I did it by just slow roasting some 2-row per instructions that I found online slowly increasing the temp in the stove for about an hour and 45 minutes.

My starter was a big one since I started it almost two weeks earlier expecting my fermenter. After a week on the stir plate it was off to the fridge. Then once the fermenter arrived I took the starter out and decanted ¾ the liquid and let it warm to room temp. Once room temp I added another quart of wort and back onto the stir plate. And within an hour I that I was going to have to use a blow off on my flask it started up so vigorously.


Maxed out the cooler with 25lbs of grain.



Had to use two pots for strike water and sparge water one pot was filled twice.


Really wish I had a pump this one took forever to get clear running’s. I used a decoction on this also a first for me! Stike was at 128 to end up at 120.


Pulled 6qts off boiled and returned to raise mash to 135. Then pulled 7 qts boiled to reach 146. Held at 146ish for 60 min.


By this time I was tired! So I decided to sparge on the fly since everything else was a first for this why not fly?


Realizing that I could not get all 11 gallons of preboil in my bucket and also since I didn’t have a kettle to hold 11 gallons neither I decided to rig up a splitter so each bucket got equal running’s. This concluded day one besides clean up both sanitized fermenters were filled to 5-1/2 gallons and put on the back porch since the temp was at a nice 35 degrees. I also cooled both in the buckets with my wort chiller. I don’t think it was really necessary but why not.

Day number 2!



Got 8 of 11 gallons in the pot. The other 3 are on the kitchen stove




One down 39 more to go! A few are missing from the pic since I also have the wife adding some to the 3 gallons on the stove but at about every 15 minutes.



I can almost see the finish line!



This is about 2/3 the way into the boil and I now took the wort from the kitchen stove and added it to the main kettle. This was about 80-90 minutes in so enough evaporated from both pots that I could just get it in!


WTF! Where did the time go?


Did I say I got all the wort to fit? Maybe it was too soon to call! But hey I am a pro! My boil is about to go volcanic and I still went for the camera first!


No problem the kettle only spewed an ounce or two on the ground!


My wort looks like an oil spill!


Claire agrees these are going to be good! Pulled off just a hair over 7.5 gallons.


And into the minibrew where I hit it with some oxygen!

I followed the recipes online but used Brewpal to scale it to 7.5 gallons. I also roasted my own grain for the amber so the color may not be exact but with the amount of grain I really doubt it will matter.

24 LBS pils
.75 Amber
2.25 Amarillo
2.25 Simcoe
2.25 Warrior

Mixed up then Split up into 40 plastic shot glasses. I believe it was about 5 grams per cup. I also fly-sparged for my first time. Brewpal gave me a gravity of 1.084 my real gravity was 1.081 possibly due to my fly technique or lack of! Other problems that came up, well lets say after a week of 15 below temps in Chicago when I turned on my outside hose it blew the pipe in the basement! Not good and I knew better. At least my spidy sense kicked in and after turning on the water I decided to check the basement and sure enough I had a geyser! I also have all the outside lines with a shut off separate from the main water so its not so bad. Just a little water to mop up and a new section of pipe in the spring.

Tonight I will start with the sugar additions but do you think I should add some DME to raise the gravity or just let it go.

Edit: Corrected OG per my notes. Also Boiled up 1qt of water with all the DME on hand (1.180) and dumped that into the fermenter. Note sure how that effects my OG though.

sweet! this will be interesting to see how it turns out. So I guess you have a lot of fun ahead of your with the feeding of sugar for the next couple of weeks huh?

humann_brewing said:

sweet! this will be interesting to see how it turns out. So I guess you have a lot of fun ahead of your with the feeding of sugar for the next couple of weeks huh?

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Definitely! This was a killer. I swear to you I was in bed at 9:30 last night and that was after I fell asleep on the couch at 9! Everything hurt this morning! I will keep up with some more pics of the additions this week.

I would love to brew a 120 but man thats a lot of work. You rock!

what no football game vibrating table for the constant hop dosing??

OLDBREW said:

what no football game vibrating table for the constant hop dosing??

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I was watching the Bears game on boil day so I myself was shaking in anger the entire time!

Are you going to give it oxygen over the first 36 hours, and are you going to add hops and sugar on the schedule during fermentation that they recommended on the TBN. You put some serious work in on this one.:rockin:

Prosted! Keep us posted on this Ryan! It's safe to say your giblets are bigger than mine...

mcmidc said:

Are you going to give it oxygen over the first 36 hours, and are you going to add hops and sugar on the schedule during fermentation that they recommended on the TBN. You put some serious work in on this one.:rockin:

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I have been hitting it with oxygen twice a day for 30 seconds. Tonight I will start the sugar/hop additions and my super high gravity yeast is on the way. I just wish I got my starting gravity up higher to start off but what’s done is done. I am already planning attempt number two after the holidays where I will do two mashes and just use the 1st running’s from each. :rockin:

ThatGuyRyan said:

I was watching the Bears game on boil day so I myself was shaking in anger the entire time!

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Seriously? I'd have thought you flatlanders would have this losing thing down pat by now.

joety said:

Seriously? I'd have thought you flatlanders would have this losing thing down pat by now.

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Hey I am a Cubs fan also so go easy

Well 8 days in and some issues but its still going. First I got my high gravity yeast in last week and started it in a quart starter on my stir plate. 24hrs later no signs of activity so I added another pint of wort. Next day still no visible signs of activity. I know you can miss it sometimes but I have always noticed signs of a health starter before such as foam, bubbles or a film at the liquid level in the flask. But for this one nothing. I then came down with a stomach bug that stopped me in my tracks this weekend so the day I was going to pitch it I decided to add another pint to the starter and give it another day moving it to a warmer room. I also only added one sugar addition to the fermenter that day since my stomach flu peaked that night and I thought it wasn’t a great idea to mess with the fermenter at that point.

Well the next day still no action in the starter! I did turn off the stir plate and let it settle and there was some build up but nothing near the amount of my other starters of that size and that long. I then went to check on the fermenter and the 1st yeast completely dropped! My heart just sank at this moment. I then tried to open the bottom port and nothing would come out. I had to give the fermenter a swirl just to free up the yeast cake. It finally started flowing again and I added another sugar addition and it thankfully started up again. But no where near as strong as it was before.

So I let it go for a few hours and decided that I had no choice but to pitch the HG starter later that day with another sugar addition. Its still fermenting but there is just a very thin layer of krausen as you can see in the pics when I go in to add more sugar. It does perk up as in the second picture immediately after the sugar but every morning or night it seems really slower than it should be and I am worried that its going to stall. Luckily today is my last day and I am off for the holidays so my plan is to split up the sugar additions into three per day to keep it going. Hopefully the HG yeast is just slow to take hold and will explode soon. Anyone else have problems with starting HG yeast? I wonder if it got too cold shipping to me.

What was the OG for each bucket? With super high gravity beers, don't you need to add the wort to a big yeast starter a little at a time, oxygenating it each time, since the yeast won't enjoy a super thick wort?

The OG from the grain was 1.081. Then over the past few days I added 6lbs of sugar before adding the high gravity yeast. As for pitching the yeast I just followed the how to for the recipe and they said to just pitch it on top of the 1st yeast. And I did oxygenate the wort in the fermenter for the first few days per the recipe also but not when I pitched the 2nd yeast.

ThatGuyRyan said:

I have been hitting it with oxygen twice a day for 30 seconds. Tonight I will start the sugar/hop additions and my super high gravity yeast is on the way. I just wish I got my starting gravity up higher to start off but what’s done is done. I am already planning attempt number two after the holidays where I will do two mashes and just use the 1st running’s from each. :rockin:

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There was an article in BYO about a year or so ago on reiterated mashing. The idea is that you use the wort from one mash to dough in on another. This can be repeated for a 3rd mash for really high gravity beers. It'll probably take as long as or longer than two separate mashes, but you'll get more out of your grain, and it sounded like you could keep the water to a fairly reasonable amount.

Sounds like a ton of work to make a beer that I always thought tasted mediocre at best. Not one of DFH's better recipe's, IMHO, and I have a pretty diverse taste in beers.

Maybe if you age it 12 years or so in Belgian bottles stored on their side.

Well it’s been about a month and it’s about done! I ended up finishing the dry hops a little early since I just marked a plastic 1oz shot glass at 4.5 grams and then eyeballed it from then on. Still I came close finishing the hops at day 24.

As for the sugar I started with 8oz 2x per day then towards the end since I was on vacation I started doing 3 - 4X daily additions. And at ended at 14lbs total for my 7.5 gallon batch.

Using my refractor I got a final gravity of 1.048 yesterday so I seem to be on target. As for the taste well so far so good. still way too early to tell but the hops seem spot on. Not as thick and sweet as the real thing but it’s still not carbed and I am only drinking warm samples.

I now turned off the rooms heat so its sitting at about 55 degrees now and I will give it another few days to let the rest of the yeast to settle. Then about a dozen will be bottled using the coopers tabs and the rest will be kegged to condition. When I keg it I will give it a good shake and pull 1/2 a pint to try it out and will report back. :rockin:

The first batch is just about gone so we brewed up another 10 gallons last night. Had a few issues with the new equipment pump, hop blocker, therminator but we finally got it done with a starting gravity of 1.101. The last batch finished at 16% so I think should easily get 20-21%

You'll have to serve it in a 4oz glass so your guests don't walk into the wall after having a pint.

Almost done with the dryhops! This batch is a killer vs. the last batch and my calculations got it at 21.3 % and it warms you to say the least! Just drinking the hydrometer sample gives you a good buzz. Also this one is way thicker than my first batch but not really sweeter but a little more hop kick, but that can be due to the increase in alcohol and the fact that it’s still only a month old. Very tasty so far and scary.

how did this turn out? how long untill its really drinkable and finished?

Both my batches turned out great. The first 6 months it’s truly a brutal beer after that it just keeps getting better. I started pulling small samples after about 3 months of conditioning but after 6-9 months and I was pulling pints well more like just a pint then you fall down Now that I have a Whiskey Barrel I am thinking about barrel ageing the next batch.