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bierblog: September 2006 Archives

September 18, 2006

solo tim and the secret october project

last brew day included our fred clone, but the real focus was our cask experiment. we wanted to brew up a good cask conditioned IPA and decided to try two versions with the same base and different hops. we also threw in my attempt at a clone of the cask-conditioned merlot stout that i had at the town hall in minneapolis.

all three casks turned out great and we settled on our "final" version of the cask ipa, dubbed Hopocalypse by eric. sounds like a great name to me.

one batch just wouldn't be enough, so we decided to throw in another hop bomb: a clone of Stone's Ruination that we're calling Devastation. tim also decided that he'd like to try his first solo run and brew up a belgian wit. after a little consultation with radical brewing tim and i came up with Witness Protection.

on with the show!

tim filling up the barleycrusher and me supervising.

the grain for the ipa, crushed and ready to mash.

a biergotter first: 3 burners for 3 batches all running in parallel. the usual two plus tim's setup for his wit.

the three experimental cask conditioned beers we brewed up recently and were tapping for the first time. 10 gallons of IPA, split into two batches with different hopping, and 5gal of sweet stout that had merlot-soaked oak cubes added. It was our first attempt at cask conditioning and a definite success. the stout was great, but not yet merlot-y enough. the ipa's were both fantastic and it was tough trying to decide between them. we loved the finish of the amarillo batch, but thought it needed something more on the front end. the simcoe+cascade batch was great, but not as nice on the finish as the other batch. so we ended up with a hybrid of the two: simcoe for FWH and bittering and amarillo the rest of the way.

tim's wit, crushed and ready.

the amarillo ipa in my volo cask fest 2005 glass. just look at that huge, rocky head and the massive chunky lace. it doesn't get much better than that.

tim working the mash for the wit and eric working on the ruination clone.

closeup of the ruination

and tim's wit

there's me checking on the works.

that's me working the mash on the ruination and eric checking the temperature.

damn that looks good.

jenn hooked us up with another great brew day lunch.

the ipa approaching boiling and the ruination rockin' along.

eric skimming the FWH and scum from the ipa. chunky!

tim's wit approaching boiling too.

3 burners with 3 pots and 3 batches of beer.

the ruination looking chunky and angry.

the ipa boiling away too

and the wit.

me checking out one of the beers with the refractometer.

fast forward a few hours. the beers are all in the fermenters and eric and i were relaxing with a few choice beverages. here you have some great lakes blackout stout. damn good stuff.

some of the evening's beers: bushwakker wheatwine in the cool ceramic swingtop, the blackout stout, and a bell's expedition stout. not pictured was a great lakes burning river pale ale and a whole bunch of scotch ale when i wooped eric's ass in some toblero.

the beers (ruination on the back left, ipa's up front), happily fermenting away. fred aging the back corner. that crazy bastard hit 12.17% and 83.78% attenuation.

tim brought his wit home and pitched it there. as you can see, it was really happy and spewing out the airlock.

Posted by grub at 4:32 PM

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Last Modified: Saturday, 30-Jun-2018 08:44:54 MST