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bierblog: June 2009 Archives

June 25, 2009

old toby

Originally I was supposed to be off to hotter climates for the second to last week of June, but due to a series of unfortunate circumstances it was canceled and I was left with a week off of work to do nothing. This gave me the perfect opportunity to solo brew with the big guy off at work. I had been kicking around the idea for a big English style barleywine for a while, with some vanilla beans and smoked malt. I wanted something like a JW Lee's Harvest ale or Midnight Sun Arctic Devil, lots of sweetness and very rich. I still wanted it to have a big bitter background though, and used US-05, so it's a bit of a hybrid American/English barleywine. I thought the smoke might lend a neat element and had been playing around with the idea of adding dried tobacco leaves after trying the awesome Church Key Tobacco Road at Cask Days 2008. I decided to call it Old Toby, an homage to the finest leaf in the Southfarthing! I'm still debating adding the tobacco leaves I acquired, but don't want to kill anyone with nicotine poisoning so research is in order. So I decided it would be good to soak some oak cubes in brandy and add those to the secondary. Anyways onto the brewing. Got up bright and early and weighed out my grains. This one was a monster! Just over 25 pounds of grain for a 5.5 gallon batch.

Me mashing in I assume.

Checking mash temp on the Old Toby.

I like the solo brews!

Delicious barleywine mash goodness.

Delicious homemade cured salmon sandwich goodness.

Vorlaufing the Old Toby, I guess it was hot enough out to lose my shirt.

I collected some wort for a magic elixir.

PBR and sunscreen, essentials of a summer brew day.

Definitely a nice colour!

Not sure what I was looking at, but get in line ladies.

A pound of organic Muscovado sugar from the market, to be added to the magic elixir.

Adding the Muscovado to the elixir, boiling these first runnings down to caramelize.

Elixir looking pretty angry, I believe I boiled 2.5 gallons down to about 1.5 gallons.

Our sweat is the secret ingredient to award winning beers.

Chilling down the Old Toby.

Some delicious looking barleywine going into the fermenter.

All in all a successful solo brewday. Slightly missed my OG, but not by much.

Posted by viggo at 10:37 AM

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Last Modified: Saturday, 30-Jun-2018 08:44:52 MST