Attempting 40%+ ABV beer... "Barley Brandy"

so are you still going to boil down to 3 gallons with the higher gravity....or are you going to boil down to the gravity you wanted, leaving you with more wort

Havent decided yet. I want it to dry out as much as possible and a 1213 dried out to say, 1025, is about 26% ABV.... Which... Is over what the 099 can do already...

And its not like I think I'll get that low but i want to get down as far as possible.

Uhhh... I'll probably overshoot volume.

Down to about 8.5 gallons

Have you posted an ingredients list for this madness yet?

7.5 gallons.


Will do that right now. One second

"Barley Brandy"

22 lb Two-Row
4 lb Six-row
1.6 lb Munich 10L
1.5 lb Rauch
1.2 lb Crystal 60
.4 lb Melanoidin
.5 OZ Peated (I couldn't resist)

.8 OZ Spalt 90 Min
.8 Oz Tettnag 90 Min
.8 Oz Hallertau 15 min
.8 Oz Hallertau 1 Min

11 gallons boiled down to 3...

Est OG approx 1.220

You put in a half OZ of peated malt? You rolling blunts with that malt and instead just decide to huck it into your mash tun instead? Thats about, what, 50 kernals?

At least you don't have to worry about overwhelming the beer with peat flavor.

Nice thread! Are there going to be pics involved?

Just dropped it into a santized cahboy and waiting foe cauboy of washed IIIPA yeast to completely crash out and yhen I'll rack the U onto it with some oxygen. Brew day cpuldnt have gone more perfect and I've been at a cookput most of the afternoon.


Not sure why PTN needs a whole event for this.

so how many gallons you end up with at what gravity?

About 4 gallons so as lomg as I am close to 1200 I'll be happy and,
mathatically I should be close. I am at a neighbor hood cookout so I will take a final final OG when I get home.

Cape's so bad ass he can make a 1.200 beer without even being present!

Try that one PTN.

How long to boil 11 down to 3-4? I'm assuming you kicked up the burner as hot as possible because you wanted to maximize boil-off rate?

bad ass

Cape Brewing said:

Brew day cpuldnt have gone more perfect and I've been at a cockput most of the afternoon.

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my only question....

where did you put it!?

not questioning, just curious, 11g boiled down to 3.5g in 3 hours....is 2.5gallons per hour boil off normal for you?

Yes

bad ass....

how many gallons postboil of u3 clone did you end up with? seems like it might be easier seperating it into 5gallons batches verus one big batch....they boil for like 6plus hours dont they usually verus the 3 you did

Must be a wide pot to get that boil off.

The gallonage of CB's boil kettle is similar to that of a hot tub.

I'd mash at 148-150. Need as much maltose as possible. Also carbonate the hell out of the final product to reduce the syrup perception.

lemy said:

I'd mash at 148-150. Need as much maltose as possible. Also carbonate the hell out of the final product to reduce the syrup perception.

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I think he said he wasn't going to carbonate... I don't think there's anyway to avoid the syrupyness though. By the time half the waters been drained out of it you could probably drizzle it on your pancakes.

Subscribed. I've been cooking up something similar (freezing down three big beers and blending after some barrel and oak cube time)

[ame]http://youtu.be/zH46SmVv8SU[/ame]

Somebody please fix that for me. I'd ask my boy but he's too busy trying to be me.

What you gonna do next, Brian? Pack on 20 pounds and dye your hair grey?

PTN

PTN finally found this thread, there goes the hood.

paulthenurse said:

http://youtu.be/zH46SmVv8SU

Somebody please fix that for me. I'd ask my boy but he's too busy trying to be me.

What you gonna do next, Brian? Pack on 20 pounds and dye your hair grey?

PTN

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ah crap... welp... it was nice while it lasted.


and... I think you missed a "2" in front of that "20". and lastly, no, I'm not trying to be you, I'm trying to actually get a beer to ferment.

I ended up with about 3.5 gallons in the carboy on top of a massive yeast cake that I had washed from the IIIPA.

I poured off a sample before racking it on the yeast but haven't had time to take a damn gravity reading (was at that cookout until pretty late).

When I get home tonight I'll have to cut that sample in half with water and then take a reading since I'll be off the scale of my hydrometer.

The carboy was churning and blowing off CO2 like a freight train this morning when I went down and checked on it.

If I can do a 12% stout without a starter or an airstone and only some WLP001 (it finished CLEAN, too), I'm sure you can pull this off. You seem to have it all thought out. Best way to make a good beer.

We'll see. Hopefully it goes according to plan.

I am going to see how this massive US-05 cake chomps away and then I'll probably cold crash it out... and rack it all into another carboy with a huge 099 cake in it (building that up now).

I am going to give the 05 some time and when I rack off of it, I'll certainly let folks know where the gravity is.

Subscribed. Looking forward to the updates.

paulthenurse said:

Somebody please fix that for me. I'd ask my boy but he's too busy trying to be me.

What you gonna do next, Brian? Pack on 20 pounds and dye your hair grey?

PTN

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Don't forget the hat. You can't pretend to be Paulie unless you're also pretending to be Indiana Jones.

the_bird said:

Don't forget the hat. You can't pretend to be Paulie unless you're also pretending to be Indiana Jones.

Click to expand...

[Short Round] You call him Doctor Jones! [/Short Round]

BrewN00b said:

[Short Round] You call him Doctor Jones! [/Short Round]

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Epic. I think.

Joining late but I'm subscribing too!

I'm no doctor, I work for a living.

Only on page 7, still reading. Hope this goes well. Subscribded

MINOR FAIL!!!!

The Fail Boat just docked temporarily at my place.

OG is only 1126. SONOFA!!!!!!

There are only two possible reasons:
1) my pre-boil gravity reading was wrong
2) my volumes were off

I am positive my pre-boil was correct. I took a sample, chilled it and read the OG. 1060. I even let it sit out over night so it could get to room temp and settle down. I got up the next morning and it was 1061.

HAD to be volumes. I had to have had a little less than I thought in terms of volume when I started my boil and ended up with more than I wanted volume-wise. And now that I am looking at the carboy... it is holding a bit more than I thought I was supposed to have.

Not the end of the world though and I'm not sure it changes much. I haven't added any maple syrup yet and the pound I am going to add will add another 7 pts of gravity to bring it up to 1133.

I have always planned on doing TWO batches and slowly feeding the first with the second so... I will simply OVER boil on the second batch and basically make an extract. I'll have to boil 11-12 gallons down to nuthin' just to get the pure sugar of the average OG up to where I wanted it (a hair north of 1200).

Lesson learned: take a freakin' gravity reading BEFORE I start chillin' and don't take my eagle eye for volume at its word.

In the end, not a big deal and I'll fix it but I wanted to at least have full disclosure here.

I am convinced that if you let wort settle, it will stratify, and then it will give you inaccurate readings depending on where you take the sample (top, middle, bottom).

I whirlpool my wort and took it straight from that so I don't think it was stratified. I think I just ended up with a lot more volume then I intended.

... and when you're working with the small volumes and high gravities I'm playing with, on a percentage basis, it makes a huge difference.

I THOUGHT I had about 11.5 gallons and boiled down to 3.5...

But... mathematically... if I only had 10.5 and boiled down to 5... that's a 1128 OG right there. Which... is almost dead on where I am.

I just needed another half an hour of boil time.

Like I was saying, on my second "feeder" batch, I'll just overshoot even the 1200 to make up for it. I'm already over on volume and under on gravity so it won't be a big deal.

I'm not overly concerned about it

Yeah I know...

Rookie mistake and now I feel shame..

Easily fixed though.

Hey... at least I ADMIT my errors... I know someone who's been withholding gravity numbers for weeks.