Monday, March 10, 2008

Strong beer and sticky floors

Updated 8/14 - Bottled. Finally. After giving this one a swift kick in the pants with a new batch of yeast, it's finally in the bottles. Of course, now I'm paranoid about bottle bombs. Hopefully everything will survive and some of the weird flavors will settle down by October or November.
--

Updated 3/30 - Racked to secondary. SG still high (around 35), but I think once that falls some more, this will be tasty. I've put it back near the heater to try and keep the yeast active...will think about adding some more to give it a little shove. If it weren't so damn sticky, I'd be pretty happy with the 8+%ABV it's at now, but I want that 10%.
--

I brewed a big beer yesterday as a demo for a friend thinking about starting the habit. This is one a made up, so hopefully it'll be tasty. I plan to let it secondary for a while and then cellar in bottle for a few months.

Batch #10
"Decathalon" Barleywine (Partial mash)
Super High Gravity Ale Yeast (White Labs 099, two vials instead of a starter)
--11 lbs Ultralight LME
--~2.5 lbs Light DME
--1 lb Caravienne
--1 lb Crystal 75L
--1 lb CaraPils
--8 oz British Chocolate
--8 oz Orange Honey
--2 oz Newport 9.3% (60min)
--2 oz Simcoe 10.4% (10min)
--2 oz Columbus 12.2% (5min)
--1 Whirlfloc tablet (20 min)
OG: 1.098-1.100
FG: <1.030
ABV: 9+%
IBU: ~75-80

Mashed the grains around 165 for 45 minutes, sparged a little over two gallons to get a total of ~3 gallons wort at a gravity of about 20. Added water and DME, brought to a boil. Added 6lbs LME and Newport after hot break. Added the remaining LME and the Simcoe at 10 minutes, Columbus at 5, chilled to 70F or so in about 30 minutes. Fermenting at 65F, lag time was about 8-9 hours. It's cool enough so that I didn't lose any beer out the airlock. The yeast should bring this to about 10% ABV.

No comments: