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

I left your house at 4 and you were already boiling

I think that you ought to consider just pulling out a cup or so to check the gravity instead of cooling off and then having to reheat the whole BL. Just a thought.

You should be done soon, B's are up 3 to 0 now!

Seriously?! Chilling the whole kettle??? Paul why didn't you bring him a brix meter???

DakotaRules said:

Seriously?! Chilling the whole kettle??? Paul why didn't you bring him a brix meter???

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I dunno how high everyone elses go, but mine drop off about 1.160...

Really??? You think I'm chilling the whole kettle??? I am pulling samples amd chilling about a cup.

I am then cutting in half with water so i can readnmy hydrometer.

1250. I am pulling the plug in five minutes.

Cape Brewing said:

1250. I am pulling the plug in five minutes.

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Does it look like pancake syrup?

Not gonna lie. It looks like syrup. LOL

can I put some on my french toast?

Its actually not quite THAT thick but it is pretty thick.

Cape Brewing said:

Its actually not quite THAT thick but it is pretty thick.

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Like jager?

Yeager is pretty slow and thick but I wouldn't want him anywhere near my pancakes.

That's just me. He and Cape live in a rather odd little community, that stuff may fly out there.

Hey?


How's my beer coming along?

Subscribing. You had me at Utopias Clone.

<<fellow "masshole".

If this works out, we'll HAVE to arrange some kind of trade. I could make up a nice bomber variety pack... Just sayin.

paulthenurse said:

Hey?


How's my beer coming along?

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Now thats funny!

Pics... I has them


The carboy on the left is the original batch that ended up at 1126 before adding a lb of maple syrup. It was brought down to 1019. I THEN added the lb of maple syrup, a fairly large cake of WLP 099 and an oxygen shot.

The carboy on the right is the second batch that was 1260 (that is not a typo).

The growler is a one gallon growler that is, as you can see, holding a metric fckton of yeast (US-O5). That is the yeast cake is racked the original batch off of.

The left carboy is a five gallon and the one on the right is a 6 gallon.

I sanitized a large pot, dumped the 1260 wort into it so I could see exactly how much I had. I marked the level, dumped it back into the carboy, and then dumped the 1019 into it and measured it out exactly so I had the exact same amounts of each.

I dumped out what was left over 1019 unfortunately but it was less than half a gallon.

I then took about a gallon out of each and put it in the other... 1) to feed the lower gravity wort and the 099 yeast and 2) to bring down the OG on the monster 1260 before dumping that massive cake of US-05

These are the "mixed" carboys.

US-05 cake pitched and both heavily hit with oxygen.

The "second batch" was continuously pushing bubbles out of the airlock in about 30 minutes.

Oh... and I used a fair amount of fermcap in both carboys. (I owe you some fermcap Drinkswell... I'm good for it)

So... we'll see. hopefully that massive 05 cake will put a real dent in the second batch. As it comes down, I'll continue to feed the second batch into the first along with 099 and oxygen.

Holy crap that's a lot of yeast... did you check MrMalty just out of curiosity? I know your in somewhat uncharted territory but it would be amusing to see... some 5 trillion cells

819 billion cells. I think Mr. Malty just stroked out.

Did not consult Mr. Malty. My strategy was to just toss as much yeast at it as I could.

I THINK, and I really would welcome some thoughts or opinions on this, the way to go with these monster gravity beers is to just overpitch by a fair amount.

The first batch wasn't that big... 1126... but I racked... what does that look like in the first pic? About 4 gallons? I racked 4 gallons of 1126 wort onto the yeast cake from 10 gallons of 1090 IPA.

That cake dropped the gravity from 1126 to 1019 in seven days. What surprises me about that is that I didn't realize US-05 was that ABV tolerant. That's 14.9% ABV and when I racked off the US-05, it was still going.

I am doing a little bit of back-of-the-envelope math and I am optimistic at the 05 will put a pretty decent dent in that monster second batch. After I equalized the volume on both batches, I am pretty sure I had about 3.75 gallons of each.

I then took about a gallon from each and swapped it into the other... so... again, rough math, a gallon out of 1260 and replace it with a gallon of 1019 and I should have dropped the OG in the second batch down to around 1.200... which... is stull huge but not 1260 huge. Of course I was adding 15% ABV BEER to the wort but the ABV would be diluted obviously and if the 05 was tolerant up to 15% to start with... so I don't think it'll be a problem.

That second carboy with the really high wort is BLASTING away and if I can get that down to 1.100 with just the US-05 (which I am reasonably confident I can), I think I'll be in really good shape.

The first batch is chugging away and chomping on the 1260 wort I added to it with the 099... and then... again, if I can get the second batch down.... I am feeling pretty good about that growing cake of 099 finishing it off with oxygen shots.

Of course the one variable I'm going to hit reasonably quickly is the ABV tolerance of the 099. It is listed at 24% I think and that's where I'm shooting (would REALLY like to break 25% but we'll see if the yeast can push it over that line).

Some random Friday morning thought...

I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to dry it out as much as possible. While batch one tastes ok now I wonder what it's going to taste like with 20% of it's water gone. I think you might need more residual sugar than you hope to have just to have something balanced and drinkable.

uhh... ok.

Not really sure where you're getting "20% of it's water gone" nor do I get your theory that it you take a "thin" beer and remove "20% of the water" that would make it even thinner but... ok.

Uhh... advice taken I guess.

I guess I should have prefaced my remark by saying there was no ball busting intended or implied.

I said 20% just as a guess. How much water/volume do you expect to remove? Is there a formula to determine that if you remove X volume from Y volume of a Z % ABV beer you will end up with ?

I think I know what he's saying. Imagine these beers finish fermenting at 1.015, before freeze concentration. Great attenuation.

Now, let's say you are able to successfully remove a good percentage of the water through freeze concentration.

What's the FG of the remaining beer going to be?n Probably a fair amount below 1.00, since the liquor that remains is going to have such a high percentage of alcohol. It could end up a lot thinner than you think.

Personally, I just think Paulie's jealous of your fermentation (although, have you done any tastings yet? You aren't making massive fusels, are you?).

If Paulie *is* right and the beer ends up too thin, though, that's a pretty easy problem to solve - just backsweeten a little.

It actually tastes pretty good, considering its a week old. I was getting alot of apple notes but what do you expect? There was a definate smoke note, we debated whether it was the rauch or the peat, but it's there and notable. I think it has potential. Of course, given that he stole my recipe for this, that is to be expected.

PTN

I think you meant to say, "improved" the recipe and actually executed it.

ok, no ball busting...

I see the point given Bird's translation but I also think that as you remove the water, you are concetrating the malt. FG will drop as you describe Bird but I think the malt backbone would also somewhat inversely increase.

If you have some magical number of "units of malt", I would strongly expect those "units" to remain constant as the volume goes down... significntly increasing the malt in the end product.

Like we were talking about earlier in thread... I think the dropping of FG like you describe Brid... will offset this increase in "malt" and won't leave it like syrup.


I am looking to take about 50% of the volume out Paul.... I am shooting for as far north of 40% as I can get. If I can get the FG on everything to a point where I'm looking at 25% ABV... I'll still freeze concentrate shooting for 50% of volume out and hope to end up with a final ABV close to 50%

I don't think it will end up being syrupy. I make beer shampoo and to make it you take a bottle of beer and boil it down to a quarter its original size. The boil i assume gets rid of both the water and the alcohol. So it is concentrating the malt like you described above and the end result is not terribly thick. Obviously it is thicker but it still flows at about the same rate. all this with no alcohol too.


But I guess it is quite warm, when I see it, reducing viscosity.

Also... like I've mentioned a couple of times on this thread, I'm not 100% hung up on this being "drinkable and balanced" (no, not a ball busting shot at you Paul).

I am doing this 90% because I want to try the process and 10% I am just hoping it is reasonably drinkable.

I want to try this, hopefully learn a few lessons, and then if I want to shoot for something a lot more refined, drinkable, balanced... whatever you want to call it... I'll hopefully be able to use a few lessons to do so.

Beer shampoo? Really? Why?

I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought that if you took a bunch of sterile gauze and dropped that in the beer when you froze it that would give the water molecules a place to seed and grow. Then you could lift out the gauze/ice slurry leaving the rest behind.

Worth considering.

paulthenurse said:

Beer shampoo? Really? Why?

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Simple cheap way to extend the life of a bottle of shampoo. Also is good for your hair and scalp.

So you spend five to six hours and $25-$35 to brew beer so you can extend a $1.98 bottle of Johnson's Baby Shampoo?


(Shaking my head in absolute disbelief.)


Hey Cape, is this farkin guy pullin' my chain or what?

Maybe you guys should PM and hash it out.

While I've been known to take a bottle of beer into the shower it's always been with the intention of drinking it while I scrub up.

Besides, I don't have that much hair left anyway. I'm only halfway thru a bottle bought in 2006

I'd say your self proclaimed goal of keeping this thread on topic is coming up a bit short. Bummah.

Obviously. I'm sure everyone is enjoying your input

Tinga said:

Simple cheap way to extend the life of a bottle of shampoo. Also is good for your hair and scalp.

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I don't think I need another reason for smelling like beer during the work day, or do you only do lambics?

eeessssshhhhhh really coming at me for some reason. I'm still a new brewer so I have a bad batch of bottles I use for cooking and what not. The beer scent is basically boiled off during the reducing phase. I'm pretty surprised a bunch of beer geeks such as yourselves have never heard of beer shampoo.

Tinga said:

eeessssshhhhhh really coming at me for some reason. I'm still a new brewer so I have a bad batch of bottles I use for cooking and what not. The beer scent is basically boiled off during the reducing phase. I'm pretty surprised a bunch of beer geeks such as yourselves have never heard of beer shampoo.

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Just bustin balls man, have actually used a beer soap before and it smelled amazing. Got it at a monastery

Hey Cape, are those yeasties finished already? We want more action photos...