12-12-12 Wee Heavy Recipe Formulation

Williams 728
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Tried a sample from the keg this weekend. Still not carbed just sitting on med toast Hungarian Oak for about 3 month now. My wife said - "carb that thing and give me some" after she tasted it.

I've got to agree, maybe a bit more time on the oak, but once she's carbed up I think it'll be a great cold weather sipping beer. Vanilla, caramel and just a bit of "smoke" from the yeast. Yum!

I also tried the Broken Wrist Barleywine (see here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/most-expensive-brew-day-ever-287866/), also aging on Med Toast Hungarian oak and I think it's going to be fantastic!
 
MDVDuber, how much oak (assuming cubes) has it been on and how much is on the oak (gallons of brew)??

I've had my ~6 gallons sitting on 3oz of medium toast Hungarian oak cubes for about three months now (coming up on four soon)... I plan to pull the first taste sample in a few weeks. :D
 
Hey - 5 gallons with 1.5 oz of oak. I started out with just a little Oak figuring I can always add it but I can't take it away. Both have the same sort of oak flavor that I get from Sam Adams Griffin's Bow, so I'm pretty happy.

BTW - I see you do lots of meads. Do you have a good recipe for a Blueberry Mead? I've got to get rid off last years crop (nice small native berries from Maine). Thanks.
 
I thought about using less oak initially but then figured "no guts, no glory" and tossed all 3oz in. Worst case I can just let it age longer if there's more oak contribution than I want.

As for a blurberry mead. Shoot me a pm and we can chat.
 
Has anyone considered packaging at this point? I did not oak mine at all and will be doing another gravity check. Last I checked it was at 1.032 which was nice. I think it's at a good spot now. I was originally going to force carbonate and bottle but with WLP099 in mine due to a too cold fermentation and a stalled yeast, I should have no issue with bottle conditioning. It seems some of the best known examples produced stateside are bottle conditioned. I was thinking of corks with crown caps for very long term aging.
 
Mine is gone..... all gone.

Kegged it after it sat in the oak barrel for a couple months, force carbed it at serving pressure for 3 weeks and hooked up the tap to give it a taste test.

One of the best beers I have EVER had bar none.

went to bed and dreamed of another pint and of dusty bottles opened to enjoy for a long while.

I woke and thought the coffee maker was going, sometime in the night the cat rubbed against the taps and what I was hearing was the death wheeze of a 20 lbs co2 tank hissing from an empty keg. All that wonderful beer down the drip tray drain and into the municipal sewer system.

I still feel sick thinking of it.
 
azscoob said:
Mine is gone..... all gone.

Kegged it after it sat in the oak barrel for a couple months, force carbed it at serving pressure for 3 weeks and hooked up the tap to give it a taste test.

One of the best beers I have EVER had bar none.

went to bed and dreamed of another pint and of dusty bottles opened to enjoy for a long while.

I woke and thought the coffee maker was going, sometime in the night the cat rubbed against the taps and what I was hearing was the death wheeze of a 20 lbs co2 tank hissing from an empty keg. All that wonderful beer down the drip tray drain and into the municipal sewer system.

I still feel sick thinking of it.
Click to expand...

That really really blows.
 
azscoob said:
Mine is gone..... all gone.
Click to expand...

Dear lord. I am sorry - that is horrible. I'm still paranoid that one day I'll ruin a batch with an infection; I can't imagine losing a whole batch that was good.

Mine's still sitting in a secondary carboy, bulk aging along. I haven't decided how I'm going to carb it yet. I have a jar of 1728 I just made for a RIS, so I might grow it up and add some more of that; ABV's only at 11%, which is below the 12% tolerance of 1728. Alternately, I could force carb it. I've always bottle conditioned, though.
 
azscoob, that's simply horrible... All that wonderful brew gone and you only had one taste of it.

Did the cat survive your wrath? Did you at least shave the little bugger?

Mine is still sitting sealed up in my aging keg, with 3oz of Hungarian oak in there. I'll be moving within the next two months, so I'm not going to do anything more with it until I'm either in the new place, or in order to transport it. I expect to have enough to fill two 3 gallon kegs.

What happened to azscoob makes me glad for at least two things.
1. I don't have any pets.
2. My taps are in the brew fridge door, so no F'ing cat could do what that one did.
 
The cat is 17 years old so she won't be around much longer,

How do you think peta would react if I made a Daniel Boone style cap from the pelt?
 
I plan on getting my dog a full body mount when he kicks it, I figure I spent so much on vet bills n grooming I'm going to enjoy his company until I die.

I'm gonna bottle my batch here next month I think, I've been bulk aging since dec. I was thinking off adding a pack of us-05 at bottling to ensure a good carb, what's everyone else doing? The new yeast shouldn't effect the flavor much should it? This is the first batch I've bulked aged.
 
Sapperxl: You're probably ok without adding any yeast for bottle conditioning, but if you want to, I believe the pitching rate is more like 2 grams per 5 gal, or 1/5 of a packet of US-05
 
I should take my wee heavy out of primary...... I think today is the 6 month mark since brewed.
 
Uh oh! So I checked my gravity again and I'm at 1.026. I need to check it with a wild yeast test. That change from 1.032 to 1.026 is no a reading error. I use a lab precision hydrometer set that allows reading to 1.0000. So I know it's not a temp or user difference. I hope it's just the notoriously slow wlp099 finishing up. I'll check it again in a month. Sheesh.
 
smokinghole said:
Uh oh! So I checked my gravity again and I'm at 1.026. I need to check it with a wild yeast test. That change from 1.032 to 1.026 is no a reading error. I use a lab precision hydrometer set that allows reading to 1.0000. So I know it's not a temp or user difference. I hope it's just the notoriously slow wlp099 finishing up. I'll check it again in a month. Sheesh.
Click to expand...

You put in 099? That definitely it. I made a low gravity DFH120 clone and it came from 1.120 to 1.010 over 10 days. It stayed at 1.010 for at least a week as far as I know, then when I checked it before doing the dry hopping I got this.

image-54672026.jpg
 
I finally kegged my wee heavy a few days ago. I should have kegged it months ago. Nothing wrong with it, just noticeably less malty than when I tasted it in Feb. Oh well, I'm going to let it carb in the keg and then fill some bottles for the swap.
 
I'm going to bottle mine in a week. I can't imagine it being shy on malt character, it was pretty much a malt bludgeon. That was a couple months ago though. Hopefully nothing's changed.
 
bottlebomber said:
You put in 099? That definitely it. I made a low gravity DFH120 clone and it came from 1.120 to 1.010 over 10 days. It stayed at 1.010 for at least a week as far as I know, then when I checked it before doing the dry hopping I got this.
Click to expand...

Yeah I had to get my gravity down from 1.045. This was MONTHS ago though and I thought it would have stopped by now. So since the last time I checked it it was about a month. I'll let it go another month and see where it is. If it's the same then I'll bottle.
 
Mine ended up in the 1.026 range and it seems perfect to me. Also, for what its worth, I used a different hydrometer than originally to measure FG when I kegged a few days ago and it read 1.030.
 
I've decided to oak mine, so I put 2 ounces of medium toast in that will sit there for the summer. I'll probably bottle in late August. It tastes REALLY good. Alcohol notes are very subdued.
 
I think I'm going to wait until November or December to do anything with mine. It sat in the primary for (I think) 3-4 months, and then I racked it over. I usually do primary only, but I didn't feel like tempting the yeast gods for a year.

I have a 1728 culture that I plan on growing and using for bottle conditioning. I really want to keep it single yeast strain if I could, vice using S-05 or 099. Barring all that, I can borrow a keg from neighbor and force carb it, then bottle.
 
If you wanted to use 099 you'd have to do a test to see how much further it would attenuate the beer beyond where it is currently. My experience with 099 has been contentious and have since learned to give it very ample time to finish because it works slow and sneaky. If you wanted to ensure carb without your 1728 I'd use champagne yeast since it does not have the necessary enzymes to ferment the remaining sugars left in your beer, 099 on the other hand certainly does.
 
I wouldn't use 099 on this beer. I just had a 1.12 IPA ferment down to 1.00 using that, and saw another thread on here where someone had a stuck fermentation on a huge Barleywine, used that, and it dropped down to 1.005 or something. Too dry for this.
 
I had to use 099 on mine since it got stuck at 1.055 and the 099 took it down to 1.026 and stopped. It might be slightly more estery than it should be but it's not 1.055 anymore. I know it was finished at 1.026 due to gravity measurements with a precision hydrometer over two months. The thing is that my wort is not the same as anyone else's wort so the other wort very well could end up way too dry.
 
Is the very first recipe on the thread the definitive 12-12-12 recipe? I saw several scattered on the first few pages and would rather not run through 55 pages with a fine-tooth comb. :D Anybody?
 
Thanks for the link—I may have never found that. :) Gonna brew this in the next 4-6 weeks, targeting late winter consumption.
 
No sweat - I had to scan like 20 pages to find the post I made directing others to the recipe post that.... Well you get the idea. It's not a bad thing to scan the post brew reports to gain some pointers or to put yourself to sleep at night...

This is a great beer BTW.
 
I've got a lot of beer to bottle this weekend. This one is going to be one of them. I will even use some of my fancy useless oxygen absorbing caps.
 
When do these historically get shipped? I am still in for it, but I'm going to be underway (Navy) for awhile around winter time. I should be home around Christmas, but I don't want to upset anyone if I don't respond to PMs asking why my bottles haven't shipped.
 
Well, when I brewed this way back last year, I had only been brewing for about 6 months and had never made a beer this big. My OG was only around 1.8 (I'm too lazy to look it up now.) When I saw that people were shooting for 1.1, I started assuming l wouldn't participate in the swap, since people wouldn't want to send me something that wasn't anything like what they got back. So I started trying them, and mmmmboy they are good! I only have about 12 bottles left. I've made some beers that people raved over, but this is still my favorite dark/complex beer.

Do I assume correctly that I should withdraw from the exchange? I'm totally happy to drink my 12, but I would like to try other people's - especially since the only other wee heavy I've tried is Belhaven (which I like, although it's not very heavy) because it's the only one I can get.
 
Cromwell said:
Well, when I brewed this way back last year, I had only been brewing for about 6 months and had never made a beer this big. My OG was only around 1.8 (I'm too lazy to look it up now.) When I saw that people were shooting for 1.1, I started assuming l wouldn't participate in the swap, since people wouldn't want to send me something that wasn't anything like what they got back. So I started trying them, and mmmmboy they are good! I only have about 12 bottles left. I've made some beers that people raved over, but this is still my favorite dark/complex beer.

Do I assume correctly that I should withdraw from the exchange? I'm totally happy to drink my 12, but I would like to try other people's - especially since the only other wee heavy I've tried is Belhaven (which I like, although it's not very heavy) because it's the only one I can get.
Click to expand...

I would still count yourself in. It's not like anyone's going to feel gyped over a couple percent ABV. I don't consider Belhaven to be quite up to snuff for a wee heavy. Plus, considering how many people have sort of disappeared from the thread, it looks like we may need all the swappers we can get.
 
bottlebomber said:
I would still count yourself in. It's not like anyone's going to feel gyped over a couple percent ABV. I don't consider Belhaven to be quite up to snuff for a wee heavy. Plus, considering how many people have sort of disappeared from the thread, it looks like we may need all the swappers we can get.
Click to expand...

Is everyone using extra yeast for bottling? I bottled some without and after 2.5 months.... Nada....Im going ton give it a couple more months but I as hopingbfor something....
 
acuenca said:
Is everyone using extra yeast for bottling? I bottled some without and after 2.5 months.... Nada....Im going ton give it a couple more months but I as hopingbfor something....
Click to expand...

Yes, I always use a half packet of rehydrated champagne yeast for anything close to this. I literally just washed my hands from bottling mine. I'm not the least but surprised that you didn't get it to carb from the latent yeast.
 

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