I'm Thinking... 09/09/09 Barleywine

[FSR402]

A word of advice to those who have not brewed yet. If you are using a CFC or a plate chiller you may want to think twice about that.
My came out so thick that it plug the cfc twice. The first time was when I first opend the valve. I then had to unhook the cfc and blast O2 thru it to unplug it. It then pluged again with less the a gallon to go. At this point it was to low to get it to flow agian even if I did unplug it. So I used the water hose spraying on the bottom of the kettle until it was down to about 90* and then dumped it all into the carboy.
Just an FYI.

 

[Displaced MassHole]

Seems kinda funny that no one brewed on 9-9-9

 

[niquejim]

Seems kinda funny that no one brewed on 9-9-9

Was going to brew, but nasty summer cold cancelled my plans

 

[conpewter]

Seems kinda funny that no one brewed on 9-9-9

I think brewing on 9-9-9 would be too late; It is interesting that no one brewed on 9/9/2008 though

 

[mmb]

Seems kinda funny that no one brewed on 9-9-9

MassHole = Herbert George Wells ??????????

 

[korndog]

I think brewing on 9-9-9 would be too late; It is interesting that no one brewed on 9/9/2008 though

 

[wildwest450]

I just read the style guidelines for this beer, and it said to do a "lengthy" boil to enhance color. Is anyone else doing this? I could bump it up to a 75 minute boil, I know that would help out with my bittering hops, there a tad on the low side. Im doing this monster tomorrow morning and since were swapping, I want it to be perfect. I even tried washing yeast for the first time so I could pitch a nice huge slurry on this beast.

 

[Displaced MassHole]

MassHole = Herbert George Wells ??????????

Herbert George Wells....WTF?

 

[jds]

Parti-gylers, help me out here.

My plan was to brew this beer using only first runnings. Using the following assumptions:

• Target first runnings: 7 gallons at 1.090 gravity
• Target OG 5.5 gallons at 1.119
• 1.33 quarts per lb mash thickness
• 0.8 quarts / lb absorption by the mash

I calculate I'd need 17 gallons of mash water and ~ 50 lb of grain in the mash. Obviously, this won't work in a converted Sanke mash tun. Are my numbers off, or am I going to have to suck it up and boil this beer down for several hours?

 

[mmb]

Herbert George Wells....WTF?

It's a long way for a joke, but here's someone that did it.

 

[Chriso]

I just read the style guidelines for this beer, and it said to do a "lengthy" boil to enhance color. Is anyone else doing this?

I'll be doing at least a 90, I considered a 120 minute boil. Depends if I have time to order, receive, and convert my new stockpot before then. 120 minutes in the keggle will = a lot more propane than I was planning on using. (My burner doesn't "simmer" well. It's full-bore for a boil, or just sitting there with no movement on anything less. I'm hoping a new pot helps a little.)

Nice yeast. I'm pitching right onto a cake of Cry Havoc. It's in the basement right now, covered with 1.044 Centennial SMaSH.

 

[KingBrianI]

i boiled for 2.5 hrs and still didn't get down to the volume i was shooting for. Used over half a tank of propane as well. ouch!

 

[FSR402]

I just read the style guidelines for this beer, and it said to do a "lengthy" boil to enhance color. Is anyone else doing this? I could bump it up to a 75 minute boil, I know that would help out with my bittering hops, there a tad on the low side. Im doing this monster tomorrow morning and since were swapping, I want it to be perfect. I even tried washing yeast for the first time so I could pitch a nice huge slurry on this beast.

Well mine was 5 hours of boiling before the one hour boil with hops. So if that's a long boil then yes, yes I did do a longer boil.

 

[conpewter]

Hey BM, thanks for keeping up on this so well, I appreciate the work you are putting in to it, perhaps a couple people will have an extra bottle or two that get sent your way

 

[jmulligan]

Sorry if this is dumb question -

I have been wanting to give FWH a try, and wanted to know if this would be a good beer to try that with. Any thoughts?

 

[BierMuncher]

Sorry if this is dumb question -

I have been wanting to give FWH a try, and wanted to know if this would be a good beer to try that with. Any thoughts?

First wort hopping is kind of a fine tuning tool for me. I'm not sure a beer this big...aged this long will gain any benefit from it.

I did not FWH mine.

 

[jmulligan]

Thanks, BM - that's kind of what I wondered, if it was just too big of a beer to really benefit from something that subtle. I'll wait til my next brew to try it out.

 

[wildwest450]

Just finished up, everything went ok, I missed my og by a little (1.110) I didn't get my usual boil off, so I ended up with 5.75 gallons instead of the planned 5.

It takes a lot of grains to make this monster.

A nearly full 52 quart mashtun.

Holy first runnings! (temp was at 80f)

 

[wildwest450]

A good vigorous boil.

And the end result.

It's kind of hard to be stoked over a beer that will sit for a year, but im sure it will be awesome.

 

[jmulligan]

I am scheduled to go with this tomorrow. Here's my conundrum -

I have a 10 gallon Igloo MLT. Mashing all of the grain at once is going to be interesting (to say the least), and I am worried a little about efficiency. Would there be any real benefit to doing this as two separate mashes? I'm going to have to boil with 2 pots anyway (my main pot is only 9 gallons, and I figured to get any kind of decent efficiency, I'd sparge more and boil the hell out of it for 2 hours), and I wondered if I could get better efficiency if I did 2 mashes.

This is my first go at a grain bill >17 lbs, so I'm a little nervous. Thanks for any help!

 

[niquejim]

I am scheduled to go with this tomorrow. Here's my conundrum -

I have a 10 gallon Igloo MLT. Mashing all of the grain at once is going to be interesting (to say the least), and I am worried a little about efficiency. Would there be any real benefit to doing this as two separate mashes? I'm going to have to boil with 2 pots anyway (my main pot is only 9 gallons, and I figured to get any kind of decent efficiency, I'd sparge more and boil the hell out of it for 2 hours), and I wondered if I could get better efficiency if I did 2 mashes.

This is my first go at a grain bill >17 lbs, so I'm a little nervous. Thanks for any help!

You can do like I plan on doing. I'm doing 3-3.5 gallons of BW and then will run a mild off the second runnings so I don't overload my 48qt cooler. I'll also have 8 gallons of beer instead of 5

 

[jmulligan]

I'm greedy and want all 5 gallons of BW. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

 

[niquejim]

I'm greedy and want all 5 gallons of BW. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

If I still lived in Ellicott City and had a winter to keep warm in, then maybe I'd make 5, but it's 70 here in the winter
Do three equal runnings and expect your efficiency to be a little lower than normal with such a big beer

 

[CBBaron]

I am scheduled to go with this tomorrow. Here's my conundrum -

I have a 10 gallon Igloo MLT. Mashing all of the grain at once is going to be interesting (to say the least), and I am worried a little about efficiency. Would there be any real benefit to doing this as two separate mashes? I'm going to have to boil with 2 pots anyway (my main pot is only 9 gallons, and I figured to get any kind of decent efficiency, I'd sparge more and boil the hell out of it for 2 hours), and I wondered if I could get better efficiency if I did 2 mashes.

This is my first go at a grain bill >17 lbs, so I'm a little nervous. Thanks for any help!

I have a 10gal cooler MLT and a 30qt turkey fryer pot, so my solution will be to max out the cooler with about 25# of grain. Boil the first 7gal of wort with some added DME for the barleywine. And use the next 6.5-7gal for a "small" beer. Figuring out the amount of water to add for each batch sparge has been a little tricky but I think every thing looks in order. I guess I'm just don't have anything against using a little DME if it makes the job easier.

Craig

 

[Saccharomyces]

I'm building a bigger mash tun for this brew. Gotta cut the slots in the manifold tonight. I will post pics in the DIY forum.

 

[Couevas]

Transferring to secondary tonight after work.
It has been in primary for 6 weeks. I am eager to sample it, as I haven't yet.

Will update with notes on it's progression so far.

 

[Couevas]

Successful transfer!!

*Note: If you hadn't already planned on it, I strongly suggest purging your secondary with CO2 prior to transferring; if you have the ability to do so. Odds are you are going to have a lot of headspace with this beast and after being in primary for 6 weeks (if you choose that long) there will be no fermentation going on and the risk for oxidation is quite high.

Gravity was about 1.027, pretty d@mn close to the goal of 1.025 (maybe over the course of a year, it could drop the last two points, but I won't count on it.

Had a pleasantly sweet, almost fruity (ie. raisins or something) scent to it. Tasted good already. Nice sweet maltiness, but not cloying. Very, very warm. I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is going to be AMAZING in a year--potential to be the best brew I have ever created.

Followed the recipe to a tee, other than I substituted 1.5 pounds of light amber candi (homemade of course) for the table sugar, and adjustments for my brewery.

I apologize for the picture quality, all I had available was the camera on my phone (my wife took my Rebel XT when she moved to CA).

Anybody want a gallon and a half of yeast?:rockin:

 

[ShortSnoutBrewing]

Successful transfer!!

*Note: If you hadn't already planned on it, I strongly suggest purging your secondary with CO2 prior to transferring; if you have the ability to do so. Odds are you are going to have a lot of headspace with this beast and after being in primary for 6 weeks (if you choose that long) there will be no fermentation going on and the risk for oxidation is quite high.

It's for this reason I went out and bought a 3 gallon carboy. I had the 3 gallons in a 5 gallon for primary, and then transfered to the 3 gallon for the aging.

 

[Stratotankard]

So I'm mashing this beast now. 10gal Igloo, just couldn't handle the whole grain bill. So I've got about 2 gallons on the stove top being kept warm in a pot. My question is, with my MLT full, after 20 minutes the temp is about 148F. I don't have any more room to add some 160F water to try and bring the temp up. What is the best course of action from here?
Do I drain some wort out from the spigot and add hot water on top. Or is it best to leave it be...maybe mash a bit longer? Not a lot of experience with all grain and adding hot water has never been a problem until now.

Thanks,
Terje

 

[Couevas]

So I'm mashing this beast now. 10gal Igloo, just couldn't handle the whole grain bill. So I've got about 2 gallons on the stove top being kept warm in a pot. My question is, with my MLT full, after 20 minutes the temp is about 148F. I don't have any more room to add some 160F water to try and bring the temp up. What is the best course of action from here?
Do I drain some wort out from the spigot and add hot water on top. Or is it best to leave it be...maybe mash a bit longer? Not a lot of experience with all grain and adding hot water has never been a problem until now.

Thanks,
Terje

You could try many things. Your idea would work, or you could heat that wort you drained directly and add it back in.

However, if you are mashing for 60 min, and your heat loss is linear, then you will be at 144 at the end of the hour. This will be fine. You will have slightly more fermentables in your wort (if you can tell the difference). Also, finishing around 25 to 30 points makes this a very sweet beer. A couple extra points dropped to to a lower mash temp are not going to hurt anything at all.