another brew day in markham. on deck saturday was a 10gal batch of pumpkin ale for eric and jan and a 5gal batch for the secret october project.

for the 5gal batch, i debated between a few options, eventually settling on a porter loosly based on our ed fitz clone and a gonzo imperial porter clone that i have been wanting to brew. the kicker was using almost a half pound of my homegrown cascades for the flameout and dry hop additions. because of the use of cascade and the fact it’ll be served on cask, i decided to call this one casc imperial porter.

eric was running late, so while waiting for him to arrive i got the strike water on for the porter and doughed in.

i gave eric some suggestions from radical brewing and our past experience and he roasted up the pumpkin before coming to the brew day. once he arrived we quickly threw together the rest of the grain bill and mashed in. while that was going we discussed hopping and finalized the recipe. pumpkin ale was born.

guests in attendance for today’s brew were kyoko and chris, a great couple who are nice enough to let eric crash in their basement while he looks for a new apartment.

didn’t take too many photos this time around, and they’re almost all taken at the start of the brew day. ah well, this shit doesn’t change much day to day.

morning snacks. muffins, croissants, and fruit. coffee was present but not pictured. try to ignore the wort-stained tabletop.

early on the brew day. chris enjoying a cup of coffee, me tending to the porter mash, eric cleaning a keg, and jan looking on.

everybody crowding around the porter mash. i can’t remember if i was bumping up our mash temperature or heading for mashout here. from left to right we have chris, a sliver of eric’s head, jan, kyoko and me stirring the mash.

more of the same.

eric working on his keg again. go brew monkey!

our most junior member (in age and experience) and our two guests for the day listening attentively as i explained the mashing process. you can also see my cheapo wind screen. ain’t pretty, but it does the trick.

mmmmm, porter. that shit just looks damn sexy.

me checking the temperature.

i have no idea what eric and jan were discussing in these next ones, so lets just make something up.

eric: stop staring at my junk!

jan: you know you like it.

eric: you better stop or i’m gonna lay the SMACKDOWN!

jan: ok, i’m sorry man. i just love you.

eric: that’s ok, lets hug and make up.

jan: phew, that was close. if only he knew my secret burning desires.

jan: you won’t give away my secret, right?

the remains of my lunch. tasty meatloaf sandwich with cheddar and bacon as well as some fritos bbq hoops.

pumpkin ale going into the carboys. yeah, we didn’t do a great job on photos this time, completely missing anything to do with the pumpkin ale and only showing the beginning of the porter. ah well, sometimes you just get into the brewing and forget the rest of it.

our last brew day here in markham included a belgian pale. basically, that batch was just a big starter for today’s beers: a belgian strong dark ale and a tripel. i chose white labs wlp530 abbey ale yeast (the one used by westmalle, achel, and westvleteren) for this batch, loosly aiming for something in the neighbourhood of westy 12.

scott came out to join us for this brew day. as a bonus, he lives right around the corner from grand river brewing and was able to grab the 2nd and 3rd growler that they filled on their first day in service. i actually enjoyed the galt knife old style lager a little more than the ploughman’s ale, which is saying something since i’m usually an ale man. the ale was also quite good, but i felt the bittering was just a little out of balance (something they’ve agreed with and scaled back just a little since then). this was quite a treat. unfortunately, my laptop crashed before i could save the reviews, so i still need to resample them.

back when we brewed up our imperial stout we pulled off an extra couple gallons at the end and boiled the hell out of it before adding a quart back into the main wort. we pulled off the first gallon or so for the strong dark, added our demerara sugar, and boiled the snot out of it while the sparge finished. this was added back into the main wort before it came up to a boil.

on with the photos!

there’s me loading up the barleycrusher. i love this thing.

strike water coming up to temp.

eric stirring up the mash for the strong dark and scott and i looking on.

gotta get out all the lumps. nobody likes a lumpy mash.

me verifying the temperature. needed a little bump to hit our strike temp.

the magic, er, monk’s elixer. gallon or so of first runnings along with 2.2lbs of demerara.

we boiled the heck out of it until it had reduced by about half and then added it back into the main boil. mmm, delicious!

the rest of the belgian strong dark. love that colour.

hmmm, is eric happy or did he just get caught doing something wrong?

the elixer after boiling.

and added back into the main wort. crazy how much shit there was floating around in there.

good strong boil going on the strong dark. this one kept getting angry with us, but we managed not to have any boilovers.

the tripel on its way to a boil. tons of stuff floating in this one too. i think it’s from the belgian pilsner malt, since that was the only new thing for the day.

scott flipping through brew like a monk, our bible for the day.

the chaos that is my garage. this was towards the end of the brew day, with most of the gear piled up under the brew table on the left. eric and i looking for something to do while the tripel was cooling.

jenn, best brew wife ever! which reminds me, we somehow managed to forget to take a photo of our fine brewday lunch. doh!

three phases of beerdom. madness, happiness, and quiet contemplation. or maybe just three random photos of me.

eric was on a mission, killing flies in the garage. seems kind of futile killing bugs in the outdoors…

the tripel going into the fermenters, with eric and i keeping an eye on things.

another successful brew day, and two damn fine brews.

after taking a few months off, the first markham brew day of 2007 happened last weekend. on deck for the day was a big batch of hopocalypse, so eric and i could finally each have a keg to enjoy, and a belgian pale ale. the belgian pale would be something we’d never tried, and would give us a yeast cake to use on a bigger belgian beer. initial talk was to do a quad/belgian strong dark ale, but now it looks like we might split it and do this and a tripel. stay tuned for news on that…

start of the brew day. eric is cleaning up some gear before we get going.

there’s me, keeping the barley crusher going and tearing up the grain. have i mentioned how much this thing kicks ass?

warming up the strike water. small pot for the 5gal belgian pale, larger pot for the ipa.

still working on the ipa grain.

the grain bill for the belgian pale.

there’s eric doughing in the hopocalypse.

first beer of the day, moyland’s hopsickle imperial ale. “triple hoppy”.

both batches sparging. hopocalypse in the red cooler and the belgian pale in the bucket.

lunch is served. bbq burgers with cheddar and/or blue.

but before lunch i had to tend to the sparge.

burgers and doritos. mmmmmmm. jenn always hooks us up with a great lunch. we also had some tasty chocolate chip banana nut muffins early in the day.

eric likes his burger.

me too!

the belgian pale boiling. it started getting this wacky film on top. not the typical break (which we had already skimmed before adding hops), this was something different.

eric skimming the scum and first wort hops from the ipa. chunky!

the flameout addition for the ipa was 2oz of leaf amarillo. looks tasty.

it’s become a tradition that during the transfer to the fermenter we always listen to some iron maiden. start things off with number of the beast, then move on to a few of the other tracks i have. really need to get more…

the final lineup from the brew day and some evening tasting (left to right):

• central waters brewers reserve bourbon cherry stout
• central waters brewers reserve bourbon barrel stout
• kuhnhenn extraneous ale
• homebrewed christmas ale from a fellow homebrewer
• moyland’s hopsickle
• moyland’s moylander
• north coast old rasputin x
• another homebrew
• duck rabbit rabid duck imperial stout
• north coast old rasputin

another great brew day!

eric and i started talking about brewing an old ale a while ago. we knew we wanted it to be big, aiming for something like thomas hardy’s ale rather than the traditional old ale guidelines. we thought this would be a good time to revive the two tun madness we used for the imperial stout last november. that was a doble-ish setup with one cooler and a bucket and 45# of grain. this time we decided to go bigger: two coolers and 60# of grain. we figured we could pull the second runnings for some kind of hoppy brown ale. a little reading and some tinkering with promash and it was set.

the parti-gyle recipe (grain bill only), dirty old brown ale, and the two tun old ale. the grain bill on the old+brown are mocked up to get the gravity right for calculating the hop utilizations and such.

grain for the batch. special b, honey malt, aromatic malt, and maris otter. tim loaned us his cooler tun, seen in the background.

the rest of the grain. total for the batch: 60.5 pounds, which should give us two 10 gallon batches.

the two tuns, waiting for action.

and two kegs, each with about half the grain bill. one is a standard 15.5gal, the other is only 13, so one has a wee bit more than the other.

eric, looking a little rough this morning!

and me, showing off my beer advocate toque.

strike water coming up to temp.

morning snacks. banana bread, chocolate chunk cookies, tangerines, and some deadly awesome savoury shortbread.

coffee, music, promash, and designing great beers. all the necessities for an early december morning brewing.

me again, a little dusty from the grain.

lunch! some pulled pork sandwiches, bbq fritos, and dogfish head olde school barleywine.

the two tuns, sparging away.

we collected into separate vessels so we could be sure we were sparging at the same rate and got the same amount from each tun.

that’s 15 gallons of old ale at a gravity of 1.090. oh yeah, that’s also before the 2 hour and 40 minute boil.

continuing to sparge. second runnings for the “brown” ale.

both batches on the burners. the old ale on the left boiling away, and the “brown” on the right. we steeped some chocolate malt to try and darken it up, but it didn’t turn out very brown.

old ale starting to get angry.

both batches boiling now. the old ale started boiling 40min before the brown, and finished 40min after it.

both batches again. you can see my makeshift wind screen in the background and the scum skimming pot in front.

there’s me reviewing one of the day’s beers.

first hop addition on the “brown” getting angry…

a glass of something…i think this was the southern tier unearthly iipa. great stuff.

brew day beers: olde school, great lakes nosferatu, unearthly, and dogfish head world wide stout.

the “brown” happily fermenting. this one was kicking ass with almost zero lag time. 11gal at an OG of 1.057.

and the old ale starting to take off. 12gal at an OG of 1.102. didn’t quite get the boil off we wanted, so we ended up with 12gal at 1.102 instead of more like 10.5-11gal at 1.115.

the “brown” got pretty angry, so i had to put it in some bins to keep the mess contained.

and the old ale now going full throttle.

in all, this was a good brew day. the huge grain bill and two 10gal batches via parti-gyle was pretty fun. several good brews sampled. the weather was even pretty cooperative, staying above freezing most of the day.

final gravity on brown was 1.017 for 69% attenuation and 5.28%abv. final gravity on the old ale was 1.034 for 64% attenuation and 8.96%abv.

there has been a bunch of brewing since my last post, so i thought i’d post a roundup and summary of them.

tim did his first fully solo brew, a pale ale on sept 24th. spent 8 days in primary, then 7 days in secondary with 0.5oz cascade. it was kegged on oct 9th. OG 1.051, FG 1.013 for 5.00%abv and 73.69% attenuation.

tim kegged his belgian wit on oct 15th. FG 1.012 for 5.4%abv and 76.58% attenuation.

jayw brewed up a rye pale ale nov 12th. kegged dec 2nd. OG 1.060, FG 1.016 for 5.81%abv and 72.34% attenuation.

tim brewed up a barleywine on nov 19th. OG 1.092.

eric and i were joined by jan and james for a brew day on nov 4th, which was national “teach a friend to homebrew day”. jan had attended a few partial brew days but was happy to come and see the process from beginning to end. james was visiting to learn how his christmas gift would be brewed. i decided to donate a batch of beer to our annual employee charitable fund and it was auctioned off. james’s wife won the auction as a gift for him. being a big fan of boddington’s he liked the idea of trying to brew something like that, and when he saw that i’d done raspberry porter in the past he was interested to try and put a raspberry twist on the english bitter. the result was dubbed “raspboddy“, a pale pink brew with a hint of raspberry. eric and i also finally brewed up the gumballhead clone that he’s had drawn up for a while.

didn’t take many photos, but here they are.

there’s me sparging the (not yet rasp)boddy.

and the runoff.

morning snacks

gumballhead sac rest

me and james keeping an eye on the boddy sparge

the gumballhead getting angry during the boil.

casualty before the brew day. we were supposed to be doing a dark saison, so i was making up starters. sterilized the flask, added the stir bar, and poured in the yeast. then i started to dump in the starter wort and it started pouring out all over the counter and floor. only then did i notice that the flask had blown a hole in the side. unfortunately, the yeast and wort was a writeoff…

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.

Finally, the brew day we’ve been waiting for has arrived. Quite a while ago Russ and I (Eric) discussed brewing up a clone of Hair of the Dog Fred barleywine. It kicks ass, therefor we must brew it. Circular logic, because if we brew it, it must kick ass. Also on our plate was a Merlot Stout that Russ tried at the Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery, and since I’m up for brewing just about anything, a recipe was thrown together. We also decided to brew up 10 gallons of IPA, using two different hopping schedules per 5 gallons, just cause we can, and how else to use the 2 pounds of Simcoe and 2 pounds of Amarillo I picked up from morebeer.com? Actually I could think of a lot of ways but we haven’t done a proper IPA in a long while, so we’re due.

I arrived around 9:15 am, ready to go, and back at Russ’s place we finalized our recipes and weighed out the grain. Turned out we were short on Munich malt, so instead of Munich our IPA got Aromatic malt and some Honey malt, also from morebeer.com. The epic barleycrusher burned through our grains in no time, although the rye malt for the Fred clone was a bitch due to the hardness and size of the grain, although after some intense labour all was well. Just before 11 am we were told Tim had decided to ditch his plans and come help us brew, always great to have an extra set of hands, and he brought some nice beers to sample as well.

The merlot stout was the smallest of the brews so it was mashed/boiled first, came out as expected, and then Fred followed. The brewday worked out really well, due to the long boil on Fred (2 1/2 hours.) That extra time gave us some leeway to get the IPA started and before long everything had fallen into place. Our beers have come out way above gravity due to ridiculous efficiency, but extra boiloff gave us some room to dilute on the IPA. Russ and I had everything in the fermenters and in the basement by 9 pm, with a total of 21 gallons or so fermenting away. This gave us time to sample some more beers, including the nice coffee porter brewed by Russ and Taavi, as well as Russ’ cider. A perfect complement while rocking out to Guitar Hero.

Heres our weighed out grain bills for the day. From left to right: IPA, Fred, and Merlot Stout. Looks great.

The excellent barleycrusher chewing away. We’re just laughing now while chump homebrews grind by hand.

Another shot of the fabulous barleycrusher, crushing barley.

The Merlot Stout is mashing in the short pot on the left, while sparge water is heating in the converted keg on the right. The plywood is a macgyver’d windshield that Russ whipped up that morning.

Russ looking grim and holding something in his hand.

This is the Merlot Stout during the mash, sure as hell looks like a stout!

The Merlot Stout in the lauter bucket, leaving the cooler free to sparge Fred.

Heres me looking grim/maybe hungover/tired, but all that keeps a brewer on his toes.

Heres Fred being sparged, we sampled a real bottle of the Fred while this happened, and the colour was pretty damn closed.

Heres Tim looking absolutely not grim at all. Ruthless Brewing has convinced me that all homebrewers should have beards.

The remnants of a fantastic lunch, spawning energy to be used creating brewing mayhem. Jenn once again hooked us up with a great lunch.

Me skimming the scum off the Merlot Stout, I can tell its me by the badass New Balance kicks.

Some of the aforementioned mayhem: Thats 2 oz of first wort hops caking up as Fred came to a boil. note that there is about 9.5gal in a 13.5gal converted keg and it’s still close to boil over. the beer was clearly angry.

Another shot of that insane angry first wort hop action, Tim is proving its metal by throwing up the horns. \m/ Dethklok roks.

Fred as it begins its 2 1/2 hour journey at a boil. Reduced from 9.5 gallons to 6 gallons.

Another shot of Fred boiling, with the sparge water for the IPA on the other burner.

A shot of the IPA being sparged, and collecting in the brew kettle. Half of this was removed and boiled in the 10 gallon pot, to use different hop schedules.

Another shot of the sweet sweet IPA wort.

Russ and Tim fiddling around on the computer, browsing some Pr0n, err… recipes.

A shot of the brews we sampled over the course of the day. I count 7 Beeradvocate Top 10’s in there. Not bad at all.

perkuno’s hammer
celebrator
sinebrychoff porter
dreadnaught
dfh 90min
gumballhead
hotd fred
brooklyn monster ale 2005
flying dog horn dog barleywine

not pictured, but we also sampled some Sheaf Stout too.

Nice shot of the fermenter rack Grub built. The two in the front on top are the IPA’s, behind that are the Fred and Merlot Stout. On the bottom is the Oaked Wee Heavy, RIS, Wheat Wine and Bastard Child.

Another shot of happy beer in carboys.

Huge krausen on the IPA’s, nice and full of hops, the smell was fantastic.

Bunch of corny kegs filled with delicious, delicious beer.

Dedicated brewcorner in Russ’ basement, where the action begins and ends.

Russ’ beer fridge, has capacity for dispensing 3 corny kegs at the moment, with room for some extra beers.

Nothing greater than a freezer full of hops. Must be 4-5 pounds in there total. All sorts of great stuff.

update by Russ, monday aug 28th.

checked gravities on all 4 beers wed evening. here’s the status:

fred has dropped from 1.099 to 1.018. that’s 80.54% attenuation and 10.83% abv. oh yeah, and that’s before i added the pound of candi sugar, so it should gain another 1.04% abv if that all gets consumed, and maybe more if we got the yeast excited enough. that’s a 1.107 OG that should finish no higher than 1.018. yowza. interested to see where this one ends up.

the stout is being somewhat uncooperative. after throwing it on a yeast cake of wyeast 1968 (london esb) it did nothing. still no sign of activity on monday the 21st, so i smacked a fresh pack of 1968 that i had in the fridge, let it swell and pitched it in. it showed some life, but never got a really strong krausen going. it was mostly stopped again by wed when i took gravities. started at 1.062 and was down to 1.023. that’s 64.95% attenuation and 5.19% abv. that yeast should hit 67-71% attenuation, but it also might not have been done. i’ll see how they look in the next day or so and go from there.

both halves of the ipa are looking good. the simcoe/cascade half started at 1.065 and was down to 1.019, so 69.63% attenuation and 6.09% abv. the amarillo half started at 1.067 and was down to 1.019 too, for 70.49% attenuation and 6.35% abv. might have dropped a little more since. both looking good.

fred will stay in primary for at least a few days, then likely get a longish secondary. right now i’m debating what to do with the others, whether to throw them into a keg now to secondary and carbonate, or transferring to secondary for a week and then into a keg to condition them. should be clearer if i do a real secondary, but i thought the extra yeasties might help speed up conditioning. they’re being cask conditioned, so a little residual yeast is ok, as is lower carbonation. at this point i’ll probably leave them in primary until thursday and then keg and prime them.

since jayc relocated to PA earlier this year we haven’t had him around for any brew days, so when he said he was going to be in town for the weekend it seemed like a great excuse to brew something. we tossed around some recipe ideas and since i had a big bag of wheat and we’ve got a truckload of hops we decided to try brewing up a wheatwine with lots of amarillo. we put together an initial recipe, aiming for a gravity of 1.121 and over 50% wheat.

on brew day we got setup and weighed everything out. as always, the barley crusher tore through the malt without breaking a sweat. however, when it came time to grind the wheat that wasn’t the case. the first problem was that the extremely hard wheat was a little too much for the motor, so we threw the hand crank back on and got to work. that worked for a little while, but then something odd started happening. the hand crank and shaft were turning, but the wheat wasn’t moving. we scooped most of the wheat out of the hopper and could see that even though the crank was turning, the roller inside the mill was not. if i turned the crank backwards a little and then went forward it’d grind a little, then stick again. at this point i was panicing that the precious barleycrusher was broken and that we didn’t have anywhere near the amount of wheat we wanted. we decided to test whether it’d still crush barley, and it seemed to work fine, which was a relief. so we adjusted the recipe and replaced the unground wheat with maris otter. still a big, badass wheat beer, even if it wasn’t quite what we were aiming for. the final recipe for the wheatwine still looks damn good.

when Jenn saw that we had less wheat than we wanted (27% instead of about 55%) she dubbed the beer “mini-wheat” (something i often eat for breakfast). it seemed appropriate, but we kind of laughed it off…

the expected grain bill for the day. on the left about 45% barley, and on the right about 55% malted wheat.

i think this was during mash out…something that involved the mash sitting on the burner.

the hop bill for the day. simcoe and chinook for bittering and lots of amarillo.

mmmm, skum.

just one of the beers jay supplied for the brew day, the liquer de malt. the finest malt liquor i’ve ever had….but that still doesn’t mean it’s really all that good. of course, dogfish head knows that all malt liquor should be in 40oz portions and be served from a paper bag. the only problem with this is that it’s bottle conditioned and chunky as hell. even carefully pouring into pint glasses, the last glass was pretty chunky. i swear there was whole kernels of corn in there.

jay and i admiring some beer. i can’t remember if it was the LdM or not. we drank alot of beer that day.

there’s me skimming some skum.

jay loves his malt liquor.

first half of the bittering addition.

admiring the aroma of the hops.

and the second half of the bittering addition.

jay and i spilling some malt liquor “for our homies”.

right about now the beer got really angry with us. about 7 gallons in a 15.5 gallon keg and it was ready to boil over.

a long boil that was mostly uneventful, but we didn’t have quite as much boil off as we expected so we ended with just over 6gal at 1.088 instead of the 5gal at 1.110 we were expecting…another way this beer taunted us. at this point i accepted the title of “mini-wheat”.

the photo above shows the beer less than 4 hours after pitching and already blowing off like mad.

the beers we sampled on the brew day and the previous night. Jan dropped by and brought some authentic czech pilsiners and a bottle of speedway stout. i’ll never say no to some alesmith. lots of fine beers, including a bunch of homebrew that wasn’t pictured.

sly fox 113 ipa
marin brewing co ipa
lagunitas old gnarleywine
hair of the dog fred from the wood
brooklyn black chocolate stout 03/04
brooklyn black chocolate stout 05/06
dogfish head liquor de malt
alesmith speedway stout
stone 9th anniversary
rye barleywine
slatopramen
primus
original flag porter

after a week this one had dropped from 1.088 to 1.021, which is
74.76% attenuation and 8.92% ABV. tasted fantastic. if i didn’t know better i’d swear it had apricots in it. looking forward to drinking this one!

one final note on the barely crusher. even after the trouble i had with the wheat (and the same issue with the rye in our fred clone) i still love this thing. i emailed the manufacturer to tell them about my problems. Randy immediately replied and was very apologetic. he told me that since i had already figured out what the issue was there was no need to return my barley crusher to them for inspection. he said that if i felt OK with taking my mill apart and installing a new roller he’d ship me one out right away, otherwise i could return the mill to them and they’d happily install and return it to me. i gave him my info and less than a week after i emailed them i had the new roller in my hand. not only does the barley crusher kick ass, the lifetime warantee and customer service are also awesome. as their website says, homebrewers can be sure that “this will be the only grain mill they will ever purchase!”. i still can’t recommend them highly enough. buy a barley crusher. you will be very happy you did.

this saturday rob and i celebrated canada day by brewing up a batch of beer. when it looked like nobody was available for last weekend’s brew day, i sent out an email asking about everyone’s availability and inquiring as to whether we should postpone. as it turned out, the only person available to brew this weekend was rob, and since rob doesn’t make it out to brew with us very often i decided that we should definitely brew somewhere on the 1st so he’d be included. since i was the only other person available, that meant brewing at my place.

since it was just rob and i, we started talking about our recipe options. rob didn’t feel like the chocolate vanilla stout from his wishlist, but said he’d be interested in an IPA or something for the summer. since we hadn’t done an IPA since last fall, i thought it was a good idea, and i even had yeast (wyeast 1056) and a variety of hops that would go great in an american IPA. his other suggestion was to make an arrogant bastard clone. i have read a few discussions on cloning the bastard on the homebrewing forum at beer advocate, so i knew that the recipe would require lots of chinook, a hop i didn’t have on hand. a little searching and i found a good clone recipe that seemed to have lots of positive response (both on that site and beer advocate). however, i also didn’t have the 120L crystal that was required. i quickly checked out paddock wood and was in luck: they sell both extra dark crystal at 125L and chinook. in total the order would come to about $20 for 1kg of crystal and 6oz of chinook. both rob and i were ok with the slightly higher cost for the batch, so i finalized our recipe and placed the order.

rob arrived shortly before 10am on saturday. i’d already measured out our water and had it heating and was working on weighing out the grain. finished off my bag of maris otter, so we had to suppliment with 10.8# of the generic british 2-row. with more than half maris otter and all the crystal and chinook, i’m guessing we won’t notice the difference.

the day went smoothly, with the only real problem being the wind. it was so windy that it seemed to take forever to heat things up (heating water, mashing out, boiling). it took 2 hours for the 14 gallons to reach a boil, which is much longer than usual. i kept turning up the burner, but it didn’t seem to matter much. i wasn’t too suprised by this when we were cleaning up and i saw that the bottom of the kettle was completely clean. usually the outside is black from the burner and sometimes the inside gets at least a little bit of stuff, but today both were clean. we just weren’t getting very efficient heating with the wind. not really a big deal though, since it just meant that we were able to sit around and relax. rob especially appreciated this, since his last two brew days were the insanely long and very cold imperial stout/rochefort brew day in november and the insanely hot and fairly long ipa/scottish brew day last june. sitting around and relaxing on a nice breezy saturday afternoon was certainly enjoyable.

by 7pm the cleanup was done and the carboys each had 5.5 gallons of our bastard child, aerated and pitched with a big starter of wyeast 1056.

after doughing in, you see rob checking the temp and me manning the mash paddle. we were still a little shy of our target temp, so we had to throw it on the burner for a bit to bring it up to 155F.

brew day snacks, and healthy ones too! jenn always takes care of us, making sure we’ve got food and beverages on brew day. today it was some strawberries and cherries. tasty!

this time we’re doing our mash out, with rob again watching the temperature and me stirring away. the first where we were actually working, and then posing for the photo.

looking good already.

with the mash out done, we loaded up the tun and got ready to sparge.

first runnings. didn’t take long for this to start running clear. great colour too.

and a while later we had collected 14 gallons, so that following the 90 min boil we’d end up with about 11 gallons of sweet tasty wort.

the hop bill for this recipe is simple: an assload of chinook. that works out to 2.5oz at 90min, 2oz at 30min, and 1.5oz at flameout.

on the burner and starting the (slow) journey towards boiling. here we see the first bit of hot break forming on the surface.

rob showing off my arrogant bastard pint glass, containing a bit of ed fitz. upon taking his first sip, rob said something along the lines of “oh my god, that’s fucking awesome”. exactly the sort of review i like to hear.

finally boiling. it was quite windy out, so it took about 2 hours to reach boiling. i really need to make some kind of a wind screen for the burner for days like this.

guess the burner managed to get pretty hot, because one of the feet sunk into the driveway about an inch, and the others made a smaller impression.

the tree next door was dropping pollen all day, and with the wind it was really getting everywhere (including into the boil pot). i joked that we would have to add “pollen” to the recipe. realistically, i don’t think enough got in to have any real effect.

just about done the boil. you can see the hops (4.5oz at this point) rolling along.

a shot of our handy measuring stick. i took a piece of 1/2″ dowel that was laying around and measured 1 gallon increments. i made a notch at each point, then cut in roman numerals to indicate every two gallons. works with our three converted kegs, and for the other 10 gallon pot we just use the stick and a tape measure.

the beer going into the carboys. we ended up with 11 gallons at 1.078 for 88% efficiency.

both carboys got aerated for about 90 seconds with pure oxygen through a 0.5 micron diffusion stone, then got a nice big starter of wyeast 1056.