Just woke up, wide damned awake at 5:30 in the morning. Thanks to everyone who came and made it a great day. Noting more funt than a bunch of friends, old and new, getting together and having fun brewing.
Some highlights from the day:
CapeBrewing texting MrsCapeBrewing, "Ya Honey, I left there 15 minutes ago, I'm almost at the store, I'll be home after I'm done shopping," then putting the phone in his pocket where it autodialed MrsCapeBrewing back up and she got to listen to us cutting ugly for another 15 minutes before she called him back and told him how well and truely he was busted. That was priceless!
Albert (Sumo) and Tony Lopez's traveling hardware store. You gotta be kidding me. Between those two you could open up a Home Depot. It's an incredible pain in the ass to throw your rig into the car and head out to brew. You always forget something and realize it when you get there. Things like wrenches and screwdivers and extra hoseclamps. And CHris is a new homeowner, he has squat for tools. Al and Tony saved the day. So did CapeBrewing with his O2 tank. But I gotta wonder, why in the world does someone ride around with a March pump in their trunk?
The food was great. I have to admit CapeBrewing's ribs were better than my riblets. (Of course, my attention was elsewhere, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.)
The weather held off and even warmed up a bit during the day, with all those burners going it was almost warm in the garage.
The Utopia itself was very nice. Very strongly alcoholic on the front end, strong notes of maple and sherry, not a lot of smokyness but it was there, sweet but not cloying, caramel, toffee, slight oakyness in the background, a whisky presence, and a very smooth maltyness. No real hop signature, at least for me. Very, very nice. It struck me that it is like a 40 year old Tawny Port, only beer.
Watching Chris run around all day was greatly amusing to those of us who know and love him. That boy gotta switch to decaf.
In the end we didn't boil down far enough. We were out of gas, litereally and figuratively. We ended up stopping with about 13 gallons to go into the fermentor. It takes a damned long time to boil off 10 gallons of beer, I'll tell you that. (I think we probably had a little more than 20 gallons to start with, probably 22) Anywys because we weren't able to boil off those last three gallons we didn't quite hit what we were looking for, we got an OG of 1.160. (And that sample was still very warm in the hydrometer flask. We might pick up 10 more points or so when it's the right temp.) I brought my hydrometer over there but couldn't find it at the end of the day so we couldn't get a coroberating OG with a second hydrometer. I brought a sample home with me so I'll check it today if I can find another hydrometer around here.) Still 1.160 is going to be an impressive beer. Rich mahogony color, and a very nice malt flavor. No scorching, thank goodness. We'll see how it goes.
JK I had a blast even though I had 2 beers all day until it was just me and PTN!!! Really great day with a bunch of great guys. We should do this type of brew every few years and hell I'll host something like this every year, just not involving so much grain in a single brew probably..
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