peter/icemachine joined us for the brewday. we like helping teach other brewers how all-grain works and always appreciate an extra brewmonkey to help along the way.

the brewday went pretty smoothly. the mill was being a little grouchy since it's overdue for being oiled, so between batches i applied a couple of drops of vegetable oil and ran some old grain through to make sure it was clean. much smoother the second time around. aside from that it was business as usual.

the mill filled up and rolling through the first batch of grain.

the grain for both batches, one in blue and the other in red. these bins from ikea are really handy.

first batch awaiting strike water. the mash was basically right up to the top on this one. one of those times when having a second 15.5gal keggle would be helpful. most of the time these 50 litre/13gal keggles work fine, or we can juggle things so the bigger batch is in our big keggle, but with two identical big batches we had no other choice.

peter cleaning one of the little keggles and me looking on. at this point we had two batches mashing and were about to get our sparge water heating. it was all-pots-on-deck here.

fast forward to the end of the mash. batch #1 had just finished vorlauf and we were collecting first runnings for the magic elixir. here eric was adding the first bag of demerara. yeah, i said first bag - a total of 8.5 pounds were used. i love the character that demerara adds to dark belgians.

more first runnings being collected.

we decided it was beer-thirty and poured a pitcher of our gonzo clone.

me adding the rest of the demerara as we started to collect the first runnings from the second batch.

once we were done collecting runnings it was time to get the magic elixir boiling. as soon as it approached a boil it immediately boiled over. we tried dropping the temperature down, but it boiled over again. it was about to boil over for a third time when we decided this was going to be annoying. we generally don't skim the elixirs, but in this case we had to. after a few minutes of clearing off the hot break we were able to get a good strong boil going without it boiling over (for now anyway). later on it still boiled over a couple of times, but it was mostly hassle-free.

you can see the mess it was making down teh sides and on the inner rim of the keggle. we had to clean the burner out a couple of times along the way.

eric was pretty excited about the double batch of quad and had to throw up a double set of horns as a result. peter was in the background helping out with the sparging.

we discovered a giant spider in the corner of the garage. however, since he had already caught two yellow jackets in his web, we figured he was helping us out and we left him alone.

the elixir getting angry again. at this point it had boiled down and had over 2gal of headspace, yet still managed to boil over a couple more times.

another view of the carnage on the keggle. from about 6.5 gallons initially it was down below the center weld of the pot, so somewhere under 4 gallons. we usually let them boil a little longer, but we needed the second burner for the second batch.

we split the elixir between the two batches, slowly adding it back to the boiling wort.

batch #1 chilling out and #2 boiling away.

brewday lunch: some badass sausage, potato, and cabbage soup, homebrew, and a few bottles that peter brought from highlander brew co.

peter, the brew monkey for the day.

one last shoot of the beers in the same state as above. by now we were almost done boiling #2.

we took the yeast cake from our dubbel [brewday blog] and split it in two for these batches. we ended up with about 22 gallons of sweet tasty quad wort at an OG of 1.102 - right on target for both gravity and volume. after oxygenating them it was no time before the yeast were going nuts. by morning both fermenters were blowing off and making a mess. the basement smelled heavenly. can't wait until we can drink it!

luckily, the cascades seemed more resistant to the bugs and still seemed to be progressing well. the harvest didn't look as big as the previous year, likely due to a combination of another cool summer and too much shade from the tree in my neighbour's yard that has grown significantly in the last two years. as usual, labour day weekend seemed to be about the right time for me to harvest.

jenn and i harvesting.

the rest of the cascade vines on the ground.

cascade hops! pretty good sized cones this year, even if the total harvest was small.

eric found a little one.

me harvesting away.

the final haul. i think this is about half of what we got last year. hopefully next summer will be better!

eric got an old wine barrel from his dad, somthing like 10 gallons in volume, and we had aspirations to try putting it to use. however, after being dry for many years, we just couldn't get it to hold a seal. we spent days trying to tighten up the rings and filling it with water, but a few of the gaps just didn't seem like they were ever going to close. we figure we can still take it apart and turn it into a whole bunch of oak staves, but our quest for an actual barrel was still on.

we're fans of applewood, a great little winery just up the road in stoufville. they make some pretty awesome stuff using entirely fruit and honey from ontario. mead, port, ciders, fruit wines, and all sorts of other cool stuff. eric and i first made a visit to them on a saturday afternoon back in december '08. after chatting with Matt for a few minutes and mentioning brewing he immediately said "you aren't those hopocalypse guys, are you?". we got a bit of a laugh out of that and ended up staying and chatting with him until an hour after they'd officially closed for the night. we both walked out with a box of their stuff and i think some of it didn't even last the weekend.

since then we've visited a few more times and eric has talked with Matt via email. we've been looking at getting a barrel and since he regularly uses them, we figured he was a good resource about where to get them and how to maintain them. well, as it turned out Matt recently emptied one of his barrels, a 47 litre medium toast american oak barrel, and asked us if we could put it to use. the barrel has held one of his meads for the last year and we thought that could work well with a beer, so we jumped at the chance. Matt's only request was that we hook him up with the final result from whatever we put in the barrel. sounds like a great deal to me.

so in late august jenn and i dropped in, restocked on some iced apple liqueur and other treats and picked up the barrel. it actually still had a wee bit of mead still in the bottom and it smelled amazing. this was going to be cool!

back in october of '08, eric had a batch of his pumpkin ale that he put into a cask for sharing at chris+kyoko's halloween party, so i threw together a quick stand for it. as it turned out, that stand was a great size for holding the newly-acquired barrel.

now for what to put in it. we knew we'd need something higher-gravity to hold up to the barrel and the mead character. the next brewday was already planned out, so we didn't really have anything new to put in, but we did have a few beers aging in secondary. notably, we had my half of our most recent old ale and russian imperial stout. we both immediately thought of firestone walker and their anniversary beers, which are blends of several barrel aged beers. we figured that both the RIS and old ale would work well with the barrel, and would get us most of the volume we'd need to fill it. eric and i decided we'd put them in and just split his previously bottled half of each batch. we also had the gonzo clone ready to go to secondary, so we used some of that to top it off and dry hopped the rest.

the first problem was how to fill the barrel. to siphon we needed to get the fermenters up higher than the barrel, so we improvised with some wood i had in the basement and one of our brewing pots. looked risky, but did the trick. sounds like a good reason to finally build a rig for moving beer with co2.

eric posing as the first thread, the old ale, starts going in.

a little closer view.

my turn.

second thread, the ris, going in.

checking the fill level as we approach the end of the RIS. it was already smelling pretty damn good.

the barrel, full and ready for a long rest.

so now we just wait. it smells pretty excellent right now. we're going to check on it from time to time and see how it progresses. we also thought it would be neat to add a little of every beer we make between now and whenever we bottle it. you likely won't taste the other beers, but it'll be neat to know that we've got something like a year's worth of beer going into the barrel. we'll keep you posted on how it progresses.

The crushed grain awaiting mash water.

Fast forward to me starting the vorlauf and rinsing the rest of the sugar our of the mash tun.

Adding the mash to the tun.

Stouty goodness!

me cleaning the keggle in preparation for sparging.

Checking the runoff while vorlaufing.

Adding the first runnings back in while it cleared up.

Now its ready for the sparge.

Looking pretty good going into the keggle.

Stout coming up to a boil.

You're gonna die, clown!

Everything was cleaned up, wort oxygenated, and yeast pitched and done by 9:15 pm. From recipe formulation to done in the house in under 5 hours is pretty good I think. Solo brewing isn't so bad when working with 5 gallon batches, I think I'll have to do it again!

looking ahead to our next brewday, we really wanted to bring back our very popular quad. last year we made our little monk dubbel [brewday blog] to generate a big yeast cake for it. this year we figured that would be a good idea to do again, so we brewed up another little monk.

this is one of those brewdays where we were busy and didn't really remember to take many pictures, but here they are anyway.

both beers mashing and some sparge water coming up to temp.

saison.

dubbel.

getting ready for the dueling sparges.

eric adding the sugar into the saison.

spinnakers blue bridge dipa, ready for review.

both beers done boiling. the one on the left was done boiling and ready to transfer, the one on the left was chilling.

another brewday done. the saison stayed in the garage to ferment in the warmer temperature and the dubbel went down to the basement.

since eric was off and running with his dunkelroggenweizen, i thought it would be a good time to bust out a recipe i've had for a while: a clone of one of my favourite beers, flying dog's gonzo imperial porter. i haven't been able to get my hands on their VSS yeast strain from wyeast, but figured the london iii strain that we used in the esb would work pretty well in its place. a little tweaking and the gonzo recipe was done.

there was only one problem with this plan - i didn't have anywhere near enough cascade for the porter, and i couldn't find any rice hulls for the dunkel. after a bit of a scramble i found mashing heads, an online homebrew shop out of london, ON. Steve was super helpful, rushing the order out the next day and even finding all the cascade i needed for the gonzo recipe! thanks guys! i know they'll be getting more of my business in the future.

eric firing up the burners, likely warming up some strike water, and jp looking on.

radical brewing, and my simplified step-by-step notes based on their description of the sweimaischverfahren - that's a double decoction mash for those not up on their german.

all hands on deck. eric and jp working the mash for the dunkel while i work on the porter.

me rockin' a new bull & bush tshirt.

vorlauf done on the porter and collection started. damn that shit was black!

the joy of decoctions: non-stop stirring for hours on end. we setup a char beside the burner to make it a little easier. here's eric taking a shift.

and now jp's turn. we really gotta say thanks to jp. we threw all sorts of brewmonkey chores at him - including a hefty portion of stirring the decoction - and he kept at it. i'm sure our arms would have fallen off if not for the extra help.

i think this was the dunkel after adding in some rice hulls to make sparging easier. we did that just before bringing it to mash out.

me throwing out the horns. i was pretty excited at how the porter was progressing.

the final bit of stirring on the second decoction step. you can really see how much it had darkened in the first shot.

boil hops for the porter. 10oz in the boil, including 6oz of cascade at flameout. and that's before the 8oz of cascade that'll go in as dry hops.

eric and jp giving the dunkel its final bump to mash out temperature.

porter approaching a boil.

mmmm, dunkelroggenweizen.

a good look at the dunkel after getting it to mash out temperature.

after getting the decoction out of the way eric decided it was time to light up a cigar, a recent acquisition as part of the gentlemen's club BIF.

both beers boiling away. we had to move them inside once the rain started coming down more steadily.

eric giving the horns for our russian imperial stout. eric corked+caged his half. mine was still sitting in secondary waiting for me to do something with it.

yeah, it looks pretty badass.

porter going into the fermenter.

i guess at this point we got busy with the final cleanup and didn't take a final picture of the dunkel. the brewday finished up just fine, and the decoction was a success. would you have expected any less?

For the weiss, we picked up the Wyeast 3056 and a bag of Weyermann malted wheat from Gilbertson and Page, and we were ready to rock. Some time ago I consulted a bit with Michael Hancock of Denisons about an approximate grain bill for a weissbier, so we went with about 45% wheat, and the rest pilsner and Munich. Now, we never really do anything half-assed, so we decided to do a proper decoction mash for the first time, which constitutes heating up a portion of the mash and resting it, then boiling and adding back to the main mash, (hopefully) bringing the total volume up to your final saccharification temperature. Not only twice as long as an infusion mash, decoctions are about five times the work, as the portion that is heated and boiled needs to be constantly stirred to prevent scorching.

The Landlord clone was quite a bit easier. Very simple malt and hop bill, and shooting for an ABV around 4%. Saturday morning rolled around and we measured out our grains and scheduled around having to do a decoction for the weissbier.

Doing the acid rest on the weissbier, wheat looks really weird and milky at first.

Throwing up the horns on the weiss, a lot of the particles settle down and it leaves this strange clear layer on the top.

Extreme close up! Whaaaaa!

Russ stirring the decoction and bringing it up to its rest temperature.

My turn! This was while the decoction was boiling. Pretty annoying and chunks of hot grain pop out on you.

Checking the temp on one of the beers, I'm not sure which but I think its the weiss.

Skimming some skum!

A delicious pesto pasta salad Jenn whipped up for the brewday lunch.

I believe that is the Landlord clone being sparged in the bucket tun.

Russ found a piece of candy in his pocket.

Or maybe he just had a sip the Ballast Point Victory at Sea Imperial vanilla coffee porter, it was excellent! Thanks Dyan.

Filling the keggle with some pale ale.

I think that beer is the Sonoran Old Saguaro barleywine, really interesting cactus-like flavour. Thanks Greg!

Me reviewing.

Russ cleaning something like a good brewmonkey.

Pictures seemed to stop during most of the action, but the gist is we nailed all our targets and ended up with full fermenters of weissbier and Landlord clone pale ale. The decoctions are a bit of a pain and some say nobody really notices the difference, but I could definitely taste a bigger malt presence than with most weissbiers. Once cleaned up and in the house, we cracked open some more beers.

Cigar City Brewing Maduro, Vanilla Maduro and Espresso Maduro that Russ picked up in a trade. Real cool mini growlers. Under Florida law, growlers have to be 32 oz and under, or 128 oz and bigger. I wish I had a 128 oz growler of Vanilla Maduro!

PBR can't survive an encounter with such delicious beverages!

All three Maduros in a row.

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.

saturday morning we loaded the cooler up with beer and ice and made the short drive over to three floyds. unlike in past years, the local police were helping out to direct traffic and get people parked. in general, it's a good thing, but it also meant that we had to park a decent ways from the brewery and make the long walk with the very heavy cooler. we've had good luck with close parking the last two years, so i guess we got a little spoiled. a 48qt cooler full of beer and ice is damn heavy!

we had both setup some trades ahead of time as well as a small tasting with alex/rhinos00 and some of his friends from ohio. we ended up basically setting up camp with them, dropping the cooler and lawn chairs and pretty much staying in that one spot all day. saw tons of familiar faces and shared many fine brews. the weather was lovely, a gentle sprinkling of rain here and there, but otherwise pretty nice.

it was confusing that people were still lining up at the crack of dawn - considering everyoen had golden tickets and was guaranteed to get their allotment of dark lord there was no point to spend 4+ hours in line before they opened the doors for sales. i waited until about mid-afternoon, filled up a couple glasses of dark lord (one from each golden ticket) and decided to hop in line. i still figured the line was going to disappear, but thought it would be good to get up and walk around for a bit, so i did. i think it took all of 30 minutes to get through the line (which moved even faster than in past years) and drop the beer off at the car. we were allowed to buy 4 bottles per golden ticket, and since you were allowed two golden tickets that meant the per-person allotment was up to 8 bottles this year from 6 in previous years. one of the guys we were hanging with (chris) didn't have a golden ticket and was really just there for the fun of it, but i told him i'd give him two of mine at cost since i was only really expecting 6 bottles anyway. by about 4pm there was no lineup left and they started selling additional golden tickets to anybody who wanted one, so i grabbed another golden ticket and another 4 bottles. when 6pm rolled around there was still no lineup and plenty of dark lord left, so they opened it up for anyone to purchase without a golden ticket. i grabbed a couple more bottles to round out an even case of 12. eric did roughly the same thing as i did, ending up with something like 15 bottles, bringing a few back to ontario for someone who bought a golden ticket and was unable to use it.

somewhere around 6:30 the wind changed direction and the temperature suddenly dropped to unpleasant levels. we took that as our cue to pack up and head back to the hotel to find some dinner. after a couple more pints of alpha king and a solid meal we walked back to the hotel and found a bunch of fellow beer geeks had set up camp in the common area and were continuing the beer tasting spirit from dark lord day. we polished off the remains of our growlers from detroit beer company and pulled out a few other bottles, including some homebrew. the gold medal and best-of-show winning old ale was a big hit. somewhere around here i decided i should probably try to get some sleep, knowing i still had a long drive ahead on sunday.

on sunday morning we reorganized the car and got everything packed in for the drive home. after a solid breakfast and a few cups of coffee we headed out. we drove pretty much straight through to the border, then rested in stony point for a bit before continuing on to toronto. we dropped eric off and continued home.

total distance traveled: 1783.9km.

this was a lighter year for me. in past years i had a ton of trades setup and spent most of my time running around taking care of that rather than just relaxing and enjoying the day. so this year i only had a few small trades setup with past trading partners, and i took care of half of them at flossmoor on friday night. i think my final haul when i got home was about 2.5 cases of beer and a couple of growlers. quality over quantity this year i guess.

another great road trip to dark lord day. already looking forward to the next one!

i didn't take many photos, but chris and ryan/rgtravers were nice enough to send me a few that they took, so i've added them in here.

the sweet dark lord day banner.

i took these for jenn. she likes root beer, and since she doesn't come along on the dark lord day roadtrip she missed out on it. signage from the train car at flossmoor.

our badass cooler at DLD. every time we'd pull a bottle out, there'd be another one to go back in its place. we shared many fine brews with many fine people on this day.

eric and some of the folks we were hangin' with. chris with the cowboy hat, alex/rhinos00 having a drink, alex's buddy (who's name is escaping me), eric/Viggo, and april/Aprilluvsbeer.

me and the ohio crew.

part way through the day eric let aliza/naproxen borrow his jacket in exchange for her sunglasses. he added the ponytail to complete this excellent look.

the line heading in to buy dark lord

me fighting to get the cork out of the killa gorilla. when we were first figuring out corking+caging, a few of the corks ended up in a little deeper than others, and thus a little more difficult to remove. ryan/rgtravers ended up working it free.

closeup shot of my sweet label. this one went over really well. in fact, ryan said it was one of his favourites of the weekend. high praise indeed!

single brewdays are too easy, so we wanted to add another to the mix. after the success of eric's breakfast brown ale and born of our love for surly's bender and coffee bender we decided on another american brown ale. so eric came up with the battlesnake brown ale - named in honour of his love of imperial battlenake.

grain for both batches, ground and ready to dough in. i think that was the brown on the left and the ipa on the right.

me working at the computer.

me enjoying one of jenn's awesome breakfast bagel sandwiches. chock full of good stuff to keep you goin' through the brewday.

both mashes now under way. ipa on the left, brown on the right.

sparging the ipa.

me checking on the mash for the brown ale.

time for the first wort hops to go in the ipa. 2oz of simcoe down the hatch!

fast forward a while. hopocalypse had been sparged and was coming up to a boil. you can see the result of eric skimming the scum and catching most of the first wort hops at the same time. mmmm, delicious hops.

more hops for the ipa, and a glimpse at our brewday lunch - home made wonton soup.

me checking on the runoff for the brown ale.

time to chill! the brewday had pretty much wrapped up at this point. the brown ale was almost done chilling and we had put most of the gear away. here was me firing up the air compressor to blow the water out of our chiller before storing it - a little trick that means you don't have to worry about it splitting in cold weather or going funky from old water sitting inside.

extreme badger closeups. wooaaaah!!! woaaaaaahhhh!

another common thread with these brewdays is cold. the 2005 brewday started out with snow on the ground and got colder as the day progressed. the hoses froze, it took forever for things to reach temperature, cleaning was a pain, and the day seemed to go on forever. this prompted me to swear i'd never brew again in sub-zero temperatures. 2006 went a little better - although the brewday was in early december the temperature stayed above freezing and the day went smoothly. 2007 was not as good. it started off well below freezing and never really got better. however, we had built up a couple of giant starters and knew we wouldn't get another chance at it, so we went for it. what a nightmare. the hoses were completely unusable. every bit of spilled water turned instantly into a sheet of ice. it made every aspect of the day more challenging and a huge pain in the ass. by the end of the day we decided that even if it meant sacrificing yeast, we'd definitely never do it again.

so late 2008 rolled around, and we started planning for our final brewday. in preparation for it, we brewed up an ESB and a stout [brewday blog] to generate nice fat yeast cakes for our old ale and russian imperial stout. however, as the brewday approached the weather was looking ugly... much like 2007 the temperature wasn't going to reach above the freezing mark. we decided to save as much of the yeast slurry as possible and hope for another warm weekend. as it turned out, we didn't see one until the spring of 2009...

the garage in "winter mode": all the gear piled high in the back corner, table collapsed on the wall, and room for the car to fit inside.

brewday breakfast: smoked salmon, berries, bagels, and two kinds of homemade cream cheese. sweet! on yeah, and the always important coffee.

i made a couple small modifications to the mill this year. i decided it was a hassle to use a bucket and it'd be more convenient to just mill straight into our kettles. i figured i could just use a clamp to hook the handle of the kettle on to the top of the mill. so i took off the leg and attached a piece of jean leg to direct the milled grain down into the kettle. works like a charm!

strike water coming up to temp.

eric weighing out the grain. since we more than killed a full bag of malt, we figured it'd be easier to just weigh the specialty malts inside and take care of the rest in the garage.

the newly modified mill. works on any kettle size too!

another view of breakfast.

freshly milled grain! i think this was the old ale.

the sugar we decided to use in our two batches. the thai palm sugar went into the old ale and the sucanat sugar went into the stout.

eric filling up the bucket tun with the "high" mash for the stout. damn that shit was black!

finally got around to slotting the manifold for our second cooler tun. the first shows it freshly slotted. the second shows it after i cleaned it all up. the third is a closeup showing it nice and smooth.

the two tuns for the ris.

vorlauf of the "high" mash. i think this is about when we started calling the beer black death.

adding the sucanat sugar to the first runnings on the stout.

can you say black?

second tun ready for its maiden voyage.

magic elixir getting angry, just the way we like it!

the main stout wort on its way to a boil.

another shot of the elixir. it had boiled down a fair bit by this point.

eric putting up the horns for the blackness of the stout.

both batches now on the burners and ready to go.

hops for both brews.

refractometer and promash.

the final result of the magic elixir. it had boiled down from around 4 gallons to about 1 gallon. you can see the carnage on the sides of the pot. beside it is the spent grain, ready for composting.

both batches rolling along. the stout was boiling and the old ale was almost there.

eric adding some of the magic elixir back into the main stout wort. we waited until we had a little boil off, then started adding it a little at a time so we wouldn't kill the boil.

old ale now happily boiling away.

stout chilling and old ale boiling.

the stout on its way into the fermenter. yep, still black as hell.

and now the old ale too.

another successful brew day.

here's the way things broke down:

day 1: sour/wild ales
russian river sanctification 750ml
russian river deviation (bottleworks 9th anniversary) 750ml
jolly pumpkin perseguidor blend 3 750ml
lost abbey cable car batch 1 750ml
lost abbey sinner's blend '08 2x 375ml
jolly pumpkin biere de mars grand reserve 12oz
jolly pumpkin luciernaga the firefly grand reserve 12oz
jolly pumpkin la roja grand reserve (unknown blend, dec '07) 12oz
jolly pumpkin la roja grand reserve (32 month aged) 12oz
deschutes the dissident 22oz
mikkeller it's alive! 750ml

day 2: stouts and belgians
alesmith barrel aged speedway stout 2006 750ml
black flag imperial stout 22oz
pisgah solstice 750ml
surly darkness 2008 750ml
the bruery levud's 750ml
the bruery barrel aged levud's 750ml
allagash victoria 750ml
allagash victor 750ml
dark horse plead the 5th imperial stout 12oz

day 3: barleywines and others
biergotter calvados oak aged monk's elixer 2008 quadrupel 750ml
biergotter frostbitten moongoat of the north 2008 braggot 750ml
alesmith wee heavy 750ml
alesmith barrel aged wee heavy 2006 750ml
east end gratitude 2005 750ml
east end gratitude 2006 750ml
east end gratitude 2007 750ml
biergotter wheatwine 2008 64oz
the bruery saison rue 750ml
captain lawrence smoke from the oak bourbon barrel aged 750ml
pisgah hellbender 750ml
kuhnhenn prometheus 750ml
full sail top sail bourbon barrel aged imperial porter 22oz
the bruery tradewinds triple 750ml
three floyds fantabulous resplendence xi 22oz

day 4: leftovers
southern tier cuvee 1 22oz
newport storm '05 750ml

not pictured (sampled throughout the weekend):
biergotter edmund fitzgerald: the second coming (tap)
biergotter dirty ape saison (tap)
biergotter homegrown hop pale ale (tap)

final carnage:

4x top 100 the world (one top 10!)
6x top 100 america (one top 10!)
8x top 100 buzzed beers in the world (one top 10!)
4x top 10 american wild ale
1x top 10 belgian strong dark ale
1x top 10 flanders oud bruin
2x top 10 russian imperial stout
2x top 10 scotch ale/wee heavy

for the american side, we ended up taking a stab at something similar to kuhnhenn's creme brulee java stout - a sweet stout around 5-6% using vanilla beans, coffee, and some seriously caramelized wort. this was our Creme Brulee Java Stout.

for the english side, an ESB seemed like a good choice. i found a good looking recipe online and tweaked it until we were happy with it.

me checking the mash temperature.

our guest for this brewday was don. he wanted to get the full all-grain experience and is looking to move into this too. always nice to share our love of brewing with someone new, and have an extra pair of hands to help out on a brewday.

one of the batches mashing.

magic elixer for the CBJS. we wanted to really burn/caramelize it to get that nice "brulee" character. it was getting a little angry in the second photo.

brewday lunch! pulled pork sandwiches and homemade coleslaw. there was something tasty in my sweet surly darkness glass, i just can't remember what it was now...

you can sort of see how much the elixer had boiled down, and the trail of carnage on the sides of the pot from when it got angry.

the elixer and i think the ESB beside it.

don keeping an eye on things.

it started to rain, so we had to pull the burners just under the edge of the garage. i was doing a hop addition to one of the two.

this shot shows some of the carnage that is my basement, but the real focus here should be on all those corked and caged bottles. we decided to get a corker and finish off some of our special batches this way. in october we bottled three batches this way: my killa gorilla super saison, eric's frostbitten moongoat of the north braggot, and his calvados-oak-aged monk's elixer. we eventually got around to putting labels on them all too. a little expensive and time consuming, but damn do they look cool!

sorry folks, no photos of this one...

first, we had eric brewing up his favourite fall seasonal, Pumpkin Ale 2008.

at the same time, i wanted to brew a beer that would showcase my homegrown hops. my first year crop was so small that it became a footnote on another beer. the second year i used non-homegrown hops for bittering and my homegrown hops for the rest of the casc imperial porter that was featured at volo cask days 2007. this year i used my homegrown centennial to bitter and homegrown centennial and cascade the rest of the way. the result was my Homegrown Hop Pale Ale.

me transferring the mash from the keggle to the tun for sparging.

the hops for the pale ale - my full harvest of cascade and centennial.

a hop addition, boulevard saison, and eric's spice concoction for the pumpkin ale.

me skimmin' the scum.

this is me trying to use the chiller to stir in the flameout hop addition. this thing was crazy full of hops.

the hops left in the keg after transferring the beer out. the false bottom worked like a charm and didn't stop until we reached the bottom. of course, with that much hops they held a fair amount of liquid so our yield was a little low.

eric squeezing out the hops.

the wort left in the bottom after wringing out the hops. probably lost a couple gallons as a result. ah well, the beer was still good!