Cincinnati HBT Brew Day

Shafferpilot hosted this one. He made a barleywine, and the rest of us did a partigyle - an 1845 clone for me and an ESB for adrock and his friend RC. We were there for about 9 hours and Shafferpilot was still boiling his BW down. It might be done cooking sometime later this week. Timing was good as we got to sample the beers we made at the last Cincy HBT group brew. Good beers and good time were had by all. Pics to follow...

Shafferpilot's steam infused mash system




My set up with sparge keggle on the brew table, the mash tun, and boil keggle




Adrock (listening intently) and RC (drinking intently)

Alowishus - not brewing this time, just here for the beer!!




Shafferpilot - barleywine needs several blue cups full of hops




Bert the hop inspector

"I have reviewed your hop schedule and find it acceptable"

Good times indeed. To keep from boiling all night, I decided to skip my third sparge, but somehow came up with an amazing 81% efficiency on about 18lbs of grain. OG of the Barleywine measured 1.098!


"I have inspected your wort and it is certified 'fermentable'"




On a side note:
If someone ever dares you to put a whole hop cone..... especially a 14% sorachi ace.... in your mouth and chew on it..... Tell them "NO!"

Wow looks like a fun day!

shafferpilot said:

Good times indeed. To keep from boiling all night, I decided to skip my third sparge, but somehow came up with an amazing 81% efficiency on about 18lbs of grain. OG of the Barleywine measured 1.098!


On a side note:
If someone ever dares you to put a whole hop cone..... especially a 14% sorachi ace.... in your mouth and chew on it..... Tell them "NO!"

Click to expand...

Yes, adrock, do tell! Do cheeseburgers bring back the ability to taste after having destroyed your taste buds?

Very nice on the OG for your BW. You need to name your batch "Open Wound Ale".

BTW, I was a sugar hog on the partigyle. The first half/second half split was 1.080 / 1.018. We had to swap 4 gallons of wort. After the boil, I was at 1.071 (expected 1.068) and adrock's batch was right on at 1.050.

Just a question for all of you 10 gallon cooler mash tun folks out there - what is the most grain you have mashed? I read tried to do Internet research and found someone did 22 pounds, but I have no idea how thick of a mash. We did 23 pounds at 1.15 ratio - it is really hard to stir completely and make sure you don't have lots of clumps with your mash an inch and a half from the top. our top and bottom thermometers were about 10F apart, so I know we needed better stirring. Still got 77% efficiency, so good thing I planned for 75% instead of low 80s. I think 22 pounds is a good practical max unless you mechanically stir.

Bearcat Brewmeister said:

"I have reviewed your hop schedule and find it acceptable"

Click to expand...

"And tell adrock over there that after he is done in the bathroom to leave the lid up on my water bowl!"

I concur with the advice above............don't eat hops! What's that? You say nobody else would do that because nobody's as dumb as shafferpilot and I? Can't argue with you there. It may be the cheapest way to get a pale ale, though......eat a hop cone, drink a BMC, you're good. The downside is that everything else tastes like pale ale; milk, cheeseburgers, french fries, etc.

the Barleywine made it down to 1.024 after some heating and swirling so it's been transferred to secondary to sit.... and sit..... and sit!