Big brew day tomorrow

Ok so after 13 hours of brewing, we finally finished. Over a barrel of beer made in 13 hours. 5 - 6gal AG batches and a 6 gal apfelwein. The rain held out until just as we packed everything up and it's pouring out now. Lucky day and it really went well. Here is the final product and there are plenty of pics if you read on.



Well it's been pouring rain for the last 12 hours, but we still plan on having a huge brew day tomorrow. We set up the canopy tonight to hopefully keep us marginally dry.

On the agenda tomorrow are 6 gallon batches of each:

American Pale Ale
American Stout
Brown Ale
Vanilla Bourbon Porter
Espresso Stout
Apfelwein

I had a batch of American Stout fermented out, so we went ahead and kegged that tonight and we made the Apfelwein about 20 minutes ago. We plan to get breakfast and start around 8am. It's either going to be a huge success or a miserable failure. I'm not sure which yet. It's supposed to be reasonably warm (almost 60) but rainy all day. I'm going to post updated hopefully with photos as the day progresses. Good luck to everyone brewing tomorrow!

Here we go:

Ingredients:


Making Apfelwein:


Making room in the carboys:


Warming up:


Doughing in:


Hops for the Vanilla Bourbon Porter:


Almost boiling:


Adding hops:

 

i tip my hat to you sir! that will be a monumental brew day! please take some pics to share. enjoy.

 

Wish I were there to take part in that!

Sounds like a blast!

Good luck on the brew day!

 

Ok we are up and ready to get started. Looks like it actually stopped raining for a second. Time to haul the brew gear out. I'll post some pics after we dough in.

 

bump for photos

 

Wow, a huge day. Good luck!!!

 

Update: Boiling third batch, about to dough in on 4th. Rain has stayed off for now. Here are some more photos.

Good advice:


Sparging:


Chinook and Willamette


Two down:

 

Its a good thing there are two of you, I would certainly lose my head if I tried to mash and boil separate batches at the same time. Good luck on the rest!

 

Ok we are closing in. The oatmeal coffee stout mash was thick as hell, so that's been slow going. We are finishing sparing now and the HLT is ready for the last batch. Here are some more pics.

Energyyyyy


4 down:

 

Second to last batch ending the boil now. Last batch about 30 mins deep on the mash. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This sparge was taking FOREVER, so we did what we had to do Centrifugal force FTW.



Spin Cycle:


Brewing into the night:

 

Wow. I'm jealous. I bet you slept really well that night!

 

This is live. We are brewing it as we speak We have been putting off drinking all day so we will have to catch up after this. I'm guessing we sleep VERY well tonight lol.

 

That's crazy! and impressive.

I have to ask 'why' and I don't mean this at all in a sarcastic or judgmental manner.

 

We just like to go big I guess. We've done about the same amount over a 3 day period, but never in a single day. My roomies like to drink too, so I'm always running out.

 

This thread is full of the win

Epic, sir, epic. Congratulations!

I like using the left over apple juice container as a blow off vessel! That's one thing I hate about Apfelwein is the empty AJ containers.

 

All six are bubbling away this morning. It's a beautiful sight!

 

Wow...That's just impressive.

 

awesome. need another roommate?

 

Addiction is a sad thing. Too bad you have to drink all that beer...... that's big chore.

 

Wow, congrats. I'm tired just reading of it.

 

Thanks everyone! There are a few batches in there that are going to require a bit of aging, so hopefully we aren't overrun with too much beer to drink I'm sure we can find a way to survive if we do haha.

 

I have to hand it to cvstrat, if it weren't for his ability to keep me motivated, I'm not sure I could have hung with him for 14 hours of no-down-time brewing. We were bounce batching every one of them and only had our typical hour long sparge break for the first batch and a few minutes of boil break on the last one. Even then we were managing cleanliness and breaking down the fest-tent that we set up in the event of rain. It was an epic adventure, one I'm proud to have been there to experience. My homebrew buddies from our hometown sent us a respectful nod on this one. Good to have our friends and forum pals behind us.

I'm hopeful that a couple of these batches will see their way to a couple BJCP events this year. It'd be cool to know what the judges think of our insane hours of work.

Can't wait to try the Porter and the Brown myself.


Cheers mate,

- Jacob

 

Good job you two! I am guessing tonight instead of last night is the night that you will sleep the best. If I participated in a legendary brewday like you guys did yesterday I would conclude with multiple trips to the kegerator. Definitely a worthwhile achievement.

 

Kirbster,

Honestly dude, we didn't drink all day. Lol, for the same reasons I wouldn't drink "on the job" as a carpenter that works very close to saw blades all day long. It seems to be the case (at least on my own behalf) that mistakes are made here and there if I get into the festivities before all the thinking is done.

As we said before, there was almost NO downtime and we were some multi-tasking sons-a-guns there for the longest time. I was scared that even the Konig Pilsner I had midway through the last brew was going to shut down my motivation and cause a ton of productivity problems...HA!

Anyways, I did wind down with a mind-blowing two cold beers afterwards, then as deserved, I slept. I told Chris I wanted to blackout after that day was done and didn't even survive the night long enough to celebrate. Tex-Mex takeout for breakfast was as close as I got. I love Moe's.

Thanks again for the kind words.

- Jacob

 

You are pouring and transferring on carpeted floors? Yikes! Did you invest in a steam cleaner?

 

Sometimes, ya just gotta take a few risks. The only carpet destroyer came in the form of Apfelwein pitched directly on top of an active ale yeast bed. Chris warned that we had better put a blow-off on it to avoid catastrophe and I said no stubbornly. I woke up on his couch the morning of the "brew day heard round the world" to the sound of a bung being rocketed skyward. It was a big time.

 

Man, I am worn out after 5 gallons. That was just awesome. I have the same color thermapen as you...did you get the waterproof one?

 

Yea, that thing beats the tar out of the kitchen ones.

 

Ok I checked the gravity of everything today. Ales are between 1.04 and 1.08, all spot on except the "best laid plans" oatmeal stout, it's at 1.028. Roused it up a bit to see if we can get some action. I'm pretty happy with the flavor of them all so far. The biggest surprise was the apfelwein which we racked directly onto an american stout safale 05 yeast cake, trub and all. It's incredible. Lots better than champagne yeast IMO.

Gonna keg the APA today and rack the vanilla bourbon porter onto some vanilla beans. Was going to make the oatmeal stout an espresso stout and bottle today but I can't because it's so super high on the gravity. Guess that's gonna have to wait a few days.

All in all a pretty big success. Just need to polish off another keg to make room and clear up a few hundred bottles. I think ScarySouthernMan has a few hundred at his house we can use. I hope.

 

I'm confused... What's target on the stout? The others were 1.04 and 1.08 and you said the stout was too high at 1.028?


I'll call ya.