quad quad quad. the first batch [brewday blog] back in 2007 was 5 gallons and debued on tap at volo during cask days. the 2008 batch [brewday blog] was doubled to 10 gallons, with half getting aged on calvados oak and corked + caged and the other half going on tap at my place. after the success of both, we knew it’d make a comeback this year. we decided to double it again and make 20 gallons. while we usually do 20 gallons on a typical brewday, this was the first time we’d done 20 gallons of a single recipe. our gear can’t handle a single batch that big, so it was brewed up as two separate but identical 10 gallon batches to be blended back together later. there was a slight shift in the bittering hops, but otherwise the final recipe was about the same as the last two years.

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!

On saturday September 5th we brewed up 10 gallons each of saison and dubbel. The next day Russ was at a family BBQ, and I was kicking around with nothing to do. Jenn asked me why I didn’t brew during the day, and I had no good answer. With no work the next day, I decided it would be a good idea! This was around 4:15 in the afternoon, so I knew it would go late, but that’s never stopped me. I’ve been wanting to do a nice dry Irish stout for quite a while, and figured this would be a good opportunity to test a new recipe. I consulted Designing Great Beers to get a feel for the recipe, and went to the basement to take a look at ingredients. Luckily we had everything I needed. I had to switch out regular chocolate malt for a bit of chocolate rye malt we had left, but I didn’t think half a pound would make any difference if it was rye or not. I weighed out the total bill of 8 pounds of grain and got things ready in the garage. It really is pretty funny dealing with tiny amounts of grain after some of our monster brewdays of late. I think from coming up with the recipe to mashing in was about half an hour.

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!

well, the brewing year has started its turn toward cooler temperatures, and we hadn’t had a chance to use our saison yeast yet. with the temperature forecast looking a little warmer over the next few days, we decided it would be a good time to reprise last year’s dirty ape saision [brewday blog], this time with different ops and a different yeast strain. the final result was dirty ape 2. if the weather cooperates we might even get another hot stretch and be able to use the yeast cake for another super saision…

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.

after our last brewday we had a couple of fat yeast cakes and we were looking for a way to use them. it seemed a logical choice to take the weizen cake (from our first single decoction) and amp it up for a double-decocted dunkel – and while we’re at it, why not add a bunch of rye and make it a dunkelroggenweizen?

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?

Since the weather has been warm, we wanted a couple beers on tap that were good and sessionable. Russ and I had been kicking around doing a weissbier for quite a while, and a while ago my British friend Sid brought back a bottle of Timothy Taylor Landlord, a quintessential British pale ale. After trying it, I realized it was pretty amazing and wanted to do a clone. I did a bit of research and put together a recipe.

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.

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.

ah, hopocalypse. that mythical beast created for cask days 2006. a perfectly balanced american ipa showcasing simcoe and amarillo hops – right around 6% and 62IBU. the only problem is we never get to drink the stuff! we always seem to end up making it for someone else and never getting any of our own. well, we set out to change that. a batch of hopocalypse that would be for our own personal enjoyment.

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!

this was sort of a “starter” brewday. both of these batches were certainly interesting in their own way, but we really wanted to use them to grow some big fat yeast cakes for our pair of year-end brews: this year’s old ale and a russian imperial stout. we wanted a nice english yeast strain for the old ale, and decided to go with good ol’ chico for the RIS. as a result, we figured we’d want a nice light english ale and a lighter american themed beer that could be fairly dark.

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!

two batches on deck for this brewday: eric’s Dirty Irish Red and our latest stab at my favourite porter, Edmund Fitzgerald: The Second Coming.

sorry folks, no photos of this one…