Hello All,
I'm about to embark on a very ambitious project. One of my friends has requested that I make the party favours for his wedding. Up Here in Alberta we're not allowed to serve homebrewed beer or wine for weddings so we settled on a bottle of homebrew for each guest to take home with them.
The Wedding will have approximately 300 guests so we figured we'd do 400 bottles of BarleyWine giving us enough extra in case we lose more than expected for trub, some for bachelor party, some for each of us to keep etc. etc.
My current plan is as follows. The recipe is:
5.5 gallon batches at 75% Efficiency:
16.25lbs 2-Row
1.5lbs Crystal 40L
3.00lbs Dextrose
2.75oz Columbus (14%) at 60 minutes
3.00 oz Cascade (5.1%) at 15 minutes
1 package s-04 yeast
Whirfloc tablet
OG: 1.108
FG: 1.024
IBUs: 93
Color: 10.4
While I'd love to have a 40 gallon setup sadly it's not in the budget. My plan is to use mine and a buddies regular homebrew setups and over the course of a weekend brew 8 individual 5.5 gallon batches with myself and the groom. After each batch is cooled it will be dumped into 1 giant fermenter for a 6 week long primary fermentation. Exactly what type of vessel Ill use for this has yet to be determined. After that is complete it will be transferred into 7-8 carboys for a 3-5 month secondary fermentation. Then Ill bottle up all 400 bottles, which will be completed with a label and an attached card explaining tasting notes, the bottles will then be waxed sealed and stamped with a large M for his last name to make quite a pretty looking package.
I've been researching large fermenter's and I'm thinking I'm going to get a large (50-55 gallon) rain barrel, cut a large hole in it and seal that with plexiglass, place it on the counter in my brew room and then dump each cooled batch of wort in once it's complete, to move to secondary I'm debating between a spigot placed near the bottom of the rain barrel or just siphoning the beer out to the 8 individual carboys. I'm concerned about the amount of heat that 40 gallons of beer is going to produce at peak fermentation, my fermentation room is a steady 62F during the summer but I can see the rain barrel easily hitting 75F at it's peak so I'm trying to figure out a cooling system, I'm also considering 2 slighly smaller fermenters. I should mention I do realize I could just do 8 separate primaries and secondaries but where's the fun in that right?
Anyways I'm in the process of ordering 3-55lb bags of 2-row, a full bag of crystal and several lbs of hops from hopsdirect right now so I can brew this on the 25th/26th weekend.
Anyone with input on larger fermenter's or operations of this magnitude that feels like adding their expertise I'd appreciated. I'll keep this thread updated with the progess I make throughout this process.
I'm about to embark on a very ambitious project. One of my friends has requested that I make the party favours for his wedding. Up Here in Alberta we're not allowed to serve homebrewed beer or wine for weddings so we settled on a bottle of homebrew for each guest to take home with them.
The Wedding will have approximately 300 guests so we figured we'd do 400 bottles of BarleyWine giving us enough extra in case we lose more than expected for trub, some for bachelor party, some for each of us to keep etc. etc.
My current plan is as follows. The recipe is:
5.5 gallon batches at 75% Efficiency:
16.25lbs 2-Row
1.5lbs Crystal 40L
3.00lbs Dextrose
2.75oz Columbus (14%) at 60 minutes
3.00 oz Cascade (5.1%) at 15 minutes
1 package s-04 yeast
Whirfloc tablet
OG: 1.108
FG: 1.024
IBUs: 93
Color: 10.4
While I'd love to have a 40 gallon setup sadly it's not in the budget. My plan is to use mine and a buddies regular homebrew setups and over the course of a weekend brew 8 individual 5.5 gallon batches with myself and the groom. After each batch is cooled it will be dumped into 1 giant fermenter for a 6 week long primary fermentation. Exactly what type of vessel Ill use for this has yet to be determined. After that is complete it will be transferred into 7-8 carboys for a 3-5 month secondary fermentation. Then Ill bottle up all 400 bottles, which will be completed with a label and an attached card explaining tasting notes, the bottles will then be waxed sealed and stamped with a large M for his last name to make quite a pretty looking package.
I've been researching large fermenter's and I'm thinking I'm going to get a large (50-55 gallon) rain barrel, cut a large hole in it and seal that with plexiglass, place it on the counter in my brew room and then dump each cooled batch of wort in once it's complete, to move to secondary I'm debating between a spigot placed near the bottom of the rain barrel or just siphoning the beer out to the 8 individual carboys. I'm concerned about the amount of heat that 40 gallons of beer is going to produce at peak fermentation, my fermentation room is a steady 62F during the summer but I can see the rain barrel easily hitting 75F at it's peak so I'm trying to figure out a cooling system, I'm also considering 2 slighly smaller fermenters. I should mention I do realize I could just do 8 separate primaries and secondaries but where's the fun in that right?
Anyways I'm in the process of ordering 3-55lb bags of 2-row, a full bag of crystal and several lbs of hops from hopsdirect right now so I can brew this on the 25th/26th weekend.
Anyone with input on larger fermenter's or operations of this magnitude that feels like adding their expertise I'd appreciated. I'll keep this thread updated with the progess I make throughout this process.