rnrchemnerd
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So i've been dreaming this one up for months now, and I finally got around to brewing it last weekend. It's been fermenting in my basement (~60°F ambient temp) for 3 days now. Airlock activity has slowed way down, so I'm going to open it up today and toss in one of two planned incremental feedings. Lemme know what you guys think. The base beer is this:
10 gallons batch
21# belgian pale
5# munich
2# caramunich
1.5# biscuit
0.5# special b
4oz Mt.Hood (4.4%) FWH
4oz US Goldings (4.8%) FWH
4oz Mt.Hood (4.4%) 60min
4oz US Goldings (4.8) 60min
I calculated the FWH as a 20minute addition. I know technically that there's a lot more bitterness in there, but if it tastes like a 20 minute addition, why not calculate it the same? Anyhoo, it should come out around 25IBU at the end (more on that later).
I mashed at 150° for 90 minutes (1.5 quarts per pound), mashout at 169°. I did get a stuck sparge (it was comically slow), but luckily I was able to break it up and get most of the first runnings out before adding the first batch sparge. It was the first time I used my new barley crusher and I think I tightend the rollers a bit too much, but that said, I hit 80% efficiency! I was planning on ~67-70% because it's such a big batch, but holy cow that's a lot of sugar. I collected 13 gallons of wort total and boiled it down to 10 gallons in two brewpots then combined before cooling. I racked into two fermentor and pitched a massive starter. The starter was a yeast cake of WL 530 that I saved from a batch of an experimental wheat beer I did last summer. I split that yeast cake in half in did two half gallon starters and pitched at high krausen. My OG for 10 gallons was 1.086. Now, I'm going to do two incremental feedings. Each fermentor is going to get 1.5# turbinado boiled in 0.5 gallons water and one can (3.2#) Oregon Fruit cherry puree (oh, and 2tsp pectic enzyme and 2tsp yeast energizer) today and a second 1.5# turbinado and can of cherry puree in two more days. I'm not really sure how to calculate the gravity contributions of the cherry puree, but I read on here somewhere that 1.029 per pound is a good place to start. Using those numbers in Beersmith, and assuming the yeast does what I want it to, I'm looking at a combined OG of 1.110 for 13gallons total volume. I also tossed 1 package (2.5oz?) of french oak cubes in each fermentor (man did those smell good)! I'm going to let the primary sit for one month, rack to a secondary for only a couple of weeks, just enough to get rid of most of the fruit junk, then bottle and age for at least a year...
So, looking at all of this, does anyone have any suggestions? Comments? Did I miss anything? I'm guessing that the turbinado and cherry will ferment out pretty clean, so I'm hoping for a FG around 1.018. Does that sound reasonble considering the massive amount of yeast that I pitched? By the way, I use 7gallon fermentors, so there was ~2g worth of head space in each fermentor. I didn't think I would need a blow off tube for that, but my airlocks got clogged after 24 hours anyway! I was able to replace them before anything bad happened, so I didn't lose much volume or yeast from blowoffs.
Lemme know what you think!
10 gallons batch
21# belgian pale
5# munich
2# caramunich
1.5# biscuit
0.5# special b
4oz Mt.Hood (4.4%) FWH
4oz US Goldings (4.8%) FWH
4oz Mt.Hood (4.4%) 60min
4oz US Goldings (4.8) 60min
I calculated the FWH as a 20minute addition. I know technically that there's a lot more bitterness in there, but if it tastes like a 20 minute addition, why not calculate it the same? Anyhoo, it should come out around 25IBU at the end (more on that later).
I mashed at 150° for 90 minutes (1.5 quarts per pound), mashout at 169°. I did get a stuck sparge (it was comically slow), but luckily I was able to break it up and get most of the first runnings out before adding the first batch sparge. It was the first time I used my new barley crusher and I think I tightend the rollers a bit too much, but that said, I hit 80% efficiency! I was planning on ~67-70% because it's such a big batch, but holy cow that's a lot of sugar. I collected 13 gallons of wort total and boiled it down to 10 gallons in two brewpots then combined before cooling. I racked into two fermentor and pitched a massive starter. The starter was a yeast cake of WL 530 that I saved from a batch of an experimental wheat beer I did last summer. I split that yeast cake in half in did two half gallon starters and pitched at high krausen. My OG for 10 gallons was 1.086. Now, I'm going to do two incremental feedings. Each fermentor is going to get 1.5# turbinado boiled in 0.5 gallons water and one can (3.2#) Oregon Fruit cherry puree (oh, and 2tsp pectic enzyme and 2tsp yeast energizer) today and a second 1.5# turbinado and can of cherry puree in two more days. I'm not really sure how to calculate the gravity contributions of the cherry puree, but I read on here somewhere that 1.029 per pound is a good place to start. Using those numbers in Beersmith, and assuming the yeast does what I want it to, I'm looking at a combined OG of 1.110 for 13gallons total volume. I also tossed 1 package (2.5oz?) of french oak cubes in each fermentor (man did those smell good)! I'm going to let the primary sit for one month, rack to a secondary for only a couple of weeks, just enough to get rid of most of the fruit junk, then bottle and age for at least a year...
So, looking at all of this, does anyone have any suggestions? Comments? Did I miss anything? I'm guessing that the turbinado and cherry will ferment out pretty clean, so I'm hoping for a FG around 1.018. Does that sound reasonble considering the massive amount of yeast that I pitched? By the way, I use 7gallon fermentors, so there was ~2g worth of head space in each fermentor. I didn't think I would need a blow off tube for that, but my airlocks got clogged after 24 hours anyway! I was able to replace them before anything bad happened, so I didn't lose much volume or yeast from blowoffs.
Lemme know what you think!
