brewing day

hopocalypse returns!

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!

brewing day, equipment

first markham brewday of 2009

since we started brewing here in markham, our final brewday of the year has been one or more big beers designed for aging, sort of our “vintage ale”. in 2005 we brewed an imperial stout and our rochefort 10 clone [brewday blog]. in 2006 we made our first old ale [brewday blog]. in 2007 we made another old ale [brewday blog], this one with an american slant. to finish 2008 we had planned both an old ale and a russian imperial stout based on the recipes from 2006 and 2005 respectively.

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.

tasting

biergotter tasting 2008

since the biergotter crew has become more spread out and gone international, it’s harder to get everyone together, but when we do, we do it right. in particular, jayc, eric, and i had all been saving up some of the best stuff in our cellars and waiting for the right time to open it. when jay made plans to come to town for 4 days over american thanksgiving, we knew it was gonna be big.

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

brewing day

yeast growth made easy

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!

brewing day

pumpkin and hops

this brewday was all about two things: pumpkin and hops.

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!

brewing day

the moongoat, the gorilla, and the georgia peach

after our previous saison brewday i really wanted to reuse the yeast cake for a big saison. the idea was to have an “imperial” or “super saison”, the big brother to the dirty ape saison. i pretty much took that 10 gallon recipe, darkened and tweaked it a little and brewed it up as a 5 gallon batch. and thus the killa gorilla was born.

eric had been talking about making a braggot for a while. he put together a recipe for the frostbitten moongoat of the north, a big ass beer with a whole bunch of honey.

jan wanted to make something lighter and belgian. we decided to use some of the dirty ape yeast cake, slim down and lighten the recipe, then throw in some peaches. the georgia saison was the result. a bunch of amarillo was used as it tends to have a nice light peachy/apricot character that we thought would work well.

the black saison in the carboy on the left and the dirty ape saison in the fermenter on the right. saison yeast likes it warm, so they were fermented in my garage where they’d be happy.

janno milling the grain for his saison…

…and stirring the mash while we were bringing the temperature up a short while later.

this is one of my new ported keggles. for mashing, i don’t want to worry about the false bottom and all that, and i don’t want grain getting into the valve, so i just got a plug that i can swap in for times like this to turn it into a “standard” keggle.

teflon and the parts for the external side of the keggle bulkhead.

jan’s peaches getting diced and ready for some time in the oven. also pictured is the pork that would become our pulled pork lunch.

sparge water on the burners and two beers mashing away.

first runnings on jan’s saison.

eric stirring his braggot mash.

first wort hops waiting for the collection of the braggot to begin.

jan and i emptying the braggot mash from the cooler so i could get the killa gorilla going.

jan adding his peaches at flameout.

the braggot…

jan’s saison cooling and the killa gorilla and braggot boiling. weather turned crappy and rainy, so we pulled the burners just inside the garage to keep the beer rain-free.

jan’s saison going into the fermenter.

the first dose of honey for the braggot: 1.5kg/3.3# of oak honey.

the chunky bottom of jan’s beer. peaches, hops, and trub clogged up the can and made siphoning a bit of a pain…

rain washing away the gunk.

i harvested yeast from the dirty ape saison for use in the saisons that jan and i brewed. here i was using a sanitized measuring cup to scoop out some yeast for jan’s saison. the killa gorilla was transferred straight onto the rest of the yeast cake.

the yeast slowly dispersing throuhg jan’s saison.

the killa gorilla and georgia saison, pitched and waiting for aeration.

brewing day, equipment, tasting

saison time + new gear

saison is a style that i’ve been interested in brewing ever since the first time i tried one. it’s an interesting and very broad style. after reading farmhouse ales i was even more interested.

with such a broad style, there were so many places that i could have started. as luck would have it, i was browsing the homebrewing forum on beer advocate when i ran across this posting by SV650TN that caught my attention. i used his recipe as a base for what i later dubbed the Dirty Ape Saison in his honour.

eric had also been working on an idea for a “black saison”, basically a typical saison recipe but adding in dehusked carafa iii and special b malts to give it a darker colour without the roasty or astringent character typically found in stouts and porters. he dubbed the final recipe Saisons In The Abyss.

this is a style that usually needs to be fermented on the warm side, not really at the sort of temperature i can maintain in the house. i decided the best solution would be to ferment it in my garage. last year we didn’t manage to find a time that matched well with the weather (always was either too hot or too cold), so it was put on hold until this year.

i waited through the spring and knew that if i wanted to make them i needed to do it now (mid july) before it got too hot in august or too cool beyond. during the week leading up to the brewday i was a bit nervous as temps were in the 95F range, but i was hopeful that it wouldn’t last. as luck would have it, by saturday the temp was falling a little (though still very humid) and the forecast was for the humidity to break and for temps to ease off to about 80F, right where i wanted.

first up, some new equipment.

i’ve long wanted something larger and more durable than our existing glass carboys, at least for primary fermentation. years ago we considered putting a lid on our boil keggle and fermenting in it, but we never got it to a point where we were happy with the seal or lid. however, i recently found this page describing how to turn kegs into fermenters. i was convinced that i should be able to do something similar.

i got 4 50L/13gal kegs over the winter with intentions of turning two of them into fermenters and the other two into keggles. scott found them online and shared them with the rest of us. since he also works at a welding shop, he had a friend and coworker cut the tops off with a plasma cutter. i had the two fermenters cut with an 8″ hole – big enough to get inside and clean them yet small enough that i could put a lid on. i had the other two cut with a standard 12″ opening and also had a bulkhead welded in.

first up was the fermenters. i picked up a 2’x4′ sheet of 1/4″ acrylic and cut a pair of 10″ diameter lids. a 36″ piece of 3/4″ steel box tubing would be used for the brace on both lids. some washers, nuts, and o-bolts would hold it all together. some 1/8″ tubing would be used to make a rough seal.

i took the 1/8″ tubing and slit it open lengthwise. i then used that to cover the cut edge of the keg top. i initially tried to seal the two ends together with some silicone sealant, but it didn’t quite work. even without that it formed a fairly decent seal. here you can see the (still dirty) keg with the tubing in place.

these two show the brace that will hold the lid in place. i had to notch out the ends since i didn’t have clearance to slide the full bar under the handles along with the nut+washer+lid. this didn’t seem to change the strength in any noticeable way – it’s still much stronger than the acrylic would be if put to the test.

i chose a washer that sits on the end of the bolt, so the lid will be protected from the bolt. the O is purely for ease of tightening and a plain old bolt or wing nut would probably work just fine too. this was an easy and inexpensive option.

i didn’t bother with trying to tap the steel bar and just got a bolt that sits on the bottom. over time the threads on the bolt might get worn down, but i have a feeling it’ll last more than long enough.

here you can see the two lids with a 1 1/4″ hole cut for an airlock/blowoff. they still have the protective paper on both sides.

this shows how the lid would be assembled. the longer slotted end is inserted first, then slid over until the other end is in place. the nut and bolt are tightended until the lid is snug and secure. you’ll see this in action later…

you can’t quite tell with the glare, but i was trying to show how i protected the lid from the bottom of the washers. the link above suggested using a piece of rubber. i made it easy and just stuck on a piece of duct tape and cut around it. that should do the trick.

you can’t quite tell, but i was trying to show how i glued the two ends of the 1/8″ tubing together with silicone. alas, as soon as i tried to remove it from the keg it fell apart. i might try melting the ends together, and failing that i’ll just leave it unattached.

the shiny new bulkhead+valve on the keggle. 1″ long 1/2″ MTP brass nipple, 1/2″ FTP stainless ball valve, and 1/2″ MTP to 1/2″ brass hose barb.

fatal flaw that would become apparent later: not using teflon tape on the connections.

inside view of the keggle. the pickup tube is fairly standard. 1/2″ MTP to 1/2″ copper connector, a couple pieces of copper pipe, and an elbow. you can also see my atypical false bottom – more on that in a moment.

here you can see the bulkhead+valve on the second keggle. notice how i had to turn the valve upside down. the vent hole just to the left of the bulkhead would have had way too much heat going upwards and melted the handle on the valve, so i flipped it this way. ideally the vent would be nowhere near the valve, but in this case it was too late.

a closer look at my false bottom. usually these are flat, sometimes hinged, perforated steel plates that cover the whole bottom from wall to wall and sit fairly high. the other approach is to use something like a bazooka tee – a screen tube attached to the pickup.

scott had hooked me up with some perforated stainless steel plate, but it was only about 11″ wide, so if i wanted to cover teh whole bottom i’d definitely need to figure out a hinge. the other reason it’d need a hinge is that the opening on the keggle doesn’t go right to the edges. i thought a dome or cone shaped bottom with an 11″ diameter would work pretty well and also be small enough to fit through the 12″ opening.

i made a cardboard template 11″ across, then transferred it to the steel plate. i used the grinder with a stainless steel cutting wheel to cut out the circle, then made a slit to the center. this is pretty sturdy stuff, so i had to use the holes to pry the two edges together, holding them in place and then beding a little more. a couple of screws helped to hold it all together. i then a dremel with a fiberglass reinforced cutoff wheel to trim out the center hole just big enough for a copper pipe to fit through.

here you can see the pickup tube that i made. this sits flush with the bottom of the keggle, which is why i made some slots in the sides to allow wort in.

the extra piece is a 3/4″ couplr that i modified so it’ll slip over the end of the tube. this helps to hold the false bottom snug on the bottom of the kettle.

i’m going to solder the left hand end into the 1/2″ MTP adapter that screws into the bulkhead, and also the downward side of the elbow. the other connection will be left unsoldered for assembly. it’s common to leave this joint open and cut a notch in the elbow, using a clamp to make sure it’s snug. so far a friction fit has worked out well enough for me.

this shows it assembled as it’d look in the keggle. it fits pretty well to the bottom, with enough surface area to collect most of the hops and trub yet still allowing the wort through. i have all the parts and need to make one for the second keggle.

me figuring out strike volume/temp and taking photos of the new gear.

jenn and jan ran out to pick up propane, sugar for the saisons, and supplies for lunch. they also returned with this net+ball thing that eric were using here…

…and this inflatable centepede sprinkler.

jan stirring the mash on the dirty ape saison. it was pretty hot and humid, so it didn’t take long for jan+eric to lose their shirts.

me about to dough in the black saison.

the temp on the black saison was a bit low, so we threw it back on the heat. here you can see eric using the mini-paddle that scott made.

me and the boys. i’m rockin’ my new hop-and-crossbones shirt from homebrew tees. this might seem familiar, as i’ve been using it as my avatar on beer advocate and other sites and also as the unofficial logo for our hopocalypse ipa.

you may remember my homebrewer shirt from them being featured in past brewday blogs. after ordering it and talking with chris/oxmasterscream, we got to talking about other shirt designs. he has some other cool designs in the works. we talked about using my hop-and-crossbones design for a shirt, which seemed like a great idea. i had always thougth it’d make a great shirt, just hadn’t got around to having some printed. this meant that i wouldn’t have to bother and more people would get to enjoy them. so help out a fellow homebrewer and order one from chris today!

jan posing it up…

…and weight lifting with the keggle.

eric getting ready to sparge the black saison.

jan cleaning up the new ported keggle.

eric cleaning up the keggle and getting ready for collection of the black saison.

adjusting the flow rate on the black saison. this one started running pretty slow due to the dehusked carafa and the wheat, but we managed to collect the expected volume before it jammed right up.

vorlauf on the regular saison and the keggle assembled and ready for action.

the saison mash during vorlauf.

the black saison looking pretty black.

sparging the saison on the left. on the right is jays’ most recent edition of the pineapple ale. this time he fermented it with a kolsh yeast, which seems to have worked out really well. quite tasty!

both beers cooking away. the black saison on the left was already boiling, and the regular saison was almost there.

at this point you might notice that this is our old standard keggle and not the shiny new one with the false bottom and ball valve. remember that comment above about teflon tape? well when the keggle was about half full i noticed that there was a very slow leak from between the bulkhead and the ball valve. i tried tightening it up, but it actually seemed to make it leak worse. i left it alone until we were done collection and then transferred the wort into the old keggle.

the good news was that the pickup tube worked like a charm, leaving almost no wort in the bottom. i’ve since taken it back apart and will be reassembling it with some teflon tape this time…

one of the new fermenters (since we only needed one today) cleaned, sanitized, and ready for action. i dumped in some sanitizer and sealed it up, then rolled it around for a few minutes. i turned it upside down and let it drain out and covered the airlock opening with a piece of plastic wrap.

the black saison in the fermenter.

the dirty ape saison transferring into the new fermenter.

“you ain’t cool unless you pee your pants.”

jan popping into frame.

“i added dice and the disco ball”

jan posing again.

the beers already looking pretty happy, with blowoffs installed.

the end of another successful brew day. harviestoun ola dubh 12, 16, and 30 ready for sampling.

jan excited about the 12.

me playing with the foil wrapper and ready to open a beer.

brewing day

canada day belgian

this year we celebrated canada day by brewing up a belgian. after brewing the little monk to generate a fat yeast cake it was finally time to brew this year’s edition of the monk’s elixer, now 10gal instead of just 5. since it was a holiday we decided to keep it light and only brew a single batch.

start of the brewday. me getting the grains crushed and eric heating the strike water.

some shots of this year’s hop crop. looking good so far.

adding the crushed grains to the keggle.

me and eric.

eric rockin’ the biergotter tee.

me working on promash.

you want some of this?

the mash paddle is also handy for stirring up the water before taking temperature readings.

checking the temp on the strike water.

shot of the two mini-keggles.

doughing in the quad.

eric stirring the mash.

this was an all-metal brewday with a fine mix of early metallica and megadeth. her you see eric and i rocking out with some air guitars, which i think was while listening to battery from master of puppets. a kickass opening to a pretty edeadly album.

eric had also apparently decided it was time to lose his shirt. personally, i’d have chosen to get rid of jeans in favour of some shorts first.

eric having some eggs. jenn made a sweet omlet with chicken and some excellent cheese. eric said it was a pretty legendary omlet.

first runnings along with 4.4#/2kg of demerara sugar…

…and onto the boil it goes. we left this to boil while the rest of the wort was collected and until it came up to a boil. this “magic elixer” gives a great carmelized character that really makes the beer.

the elixer had come up to a boil and was starting to get angry. eric was quite excited.

me checking on the rest of the wort.

eric still fascinated by the magic elixer.

damn that shit looks sexy.

ok, i was excited about it too.

still sparging.

with the sparging done, it as time to get the main wort going. you can already see that the magic elixer on the left had boiled down a fair bit.

when it got down to about 1/3 of its original volume, it changed from small dense foam to these huge honeycomb-like bubbles that were threatening to boil over at any moment. this is about when we decided it was time to dump it back into the original wort.

that was right around when chris dropped by to visit. unfortunately, kyoko was stuck at work.

adding the magic elixer into the main wort. you probably can’t tell from the photos, bit it was thick and syrupy. and looked delicious. maybe i should bottle this stuff to put on pancakes…

eric skimming the scum.

since we were using mostly noble hops, we needed a ton (5oz) for the bittering addition. i really needed to take my time adding them as the beer was getting pretty angry. here you can see it threatening to boil over, and i still had another 2oz to add.

finally managed to get the last of the hops in.

talking beer with chris.

eric cleaning out the cooler tun at the end of the day.

jenn somehow managed not to end up in any of the brewday photos (usually because she’s busy taking most of them and making sure we’re fed+hydrated).

brewing day, tasting

dubbel+houblon

time to make up more belgians. the quad and tripel we made last year turned really well, and i knew i wanted to make the monk’s elixer again – partially because i didn’t get to drink nearly enough of it and also because jenn loved it and requested more. however, before i could make the quad, i’d need to do a smaller beer to generate a yeast cake up to the task of fermenting that giant beast. the simplest solution, and one i’d been contemplating anyway, was to create it’s little brother – a dubbel. i took the original monk’s elixer recipe and scaled it down to get the little monk.

rather than brewing the same (big) tripel we did last time, jan suggested that we do something like a belgian IPA along the lines of the Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel from Achouffe. jan and i did a little research and came up with this houblon-ish recipe. similar to some clones we found, but with our own twist to keep it interesting.

on to the photos!

me, jan, and eric at the start of the brewday.

eric.

me and jan.

jan

eric working on grinding the grain.

keggles cleaned and ready for use.

eric cleaning out a pot.

jan cleaning and reassembling the manifold for our cooler tun.

the grain mill only has one (foldable) leg, with the bucket holding up the other end. works great while grinding, but when you need to remove the bucket either someone has to stand there and hold it (annoying) or you need a replacement leg. in this case we use our bucket tun. on eof these days i’m going to replace this with a second foldable leg so that we can still store it easily and yet have it stand on its own without a bucket.

me topping up the mill with grain. when buying a barley crusher people often ask whether they should get the model with the 7# or 15# hopper. the reality is, we’re almost always using more than 15# of grain in a batch, so we’d always have to refill the mill periodically. filling it up more often with the 7# model is really no big deal, so i say save the extra $24 and just go with the 7# model. if you find yourself wanting a larger hopper you can always build one.

grains for the dubbel, ground and ready for the mash.

on brewdays we’re always trying to find somewhere to prop up the mash paddle so it’s not sitting on the ground. usually that is a keggle or balanced on top of a propane tank, but that can be messy. so i just hammered a nail into the outside frame of the garage so it can hang. easy enough to rinse this off later if necessary. sometimes it’s the simple things that make brewdays easy.

jan stirring the mash for the dubbel. the mash temp was a little shy, so we had to bump it up a bit. good luck doing that if you don’t mash in a kettle!

jan cleaning and prepping the cooler tun.

me starting the vorlauf on the dubbel and eric looking on.

jan finishing up with the cooler tun.

with the vorlauf done, we had just started collection.

it was a warm day, so jenn made sure we all drank lots of water.

me hooking up the hose to the bulkhead valve.

eric doing the danse la poutine dance while the runoff on the houblon started.

boom goes the dynamite.

morning snacks and a beer, some homebrew that jan brought over from his friend rudy in buffalo.

another invention for this brew day is on the table between the bottle and bte blue cups. the thermometer is always on the table, rolling around or getting stuck. so i grabbed a scrap of wood and put a notch in it so that we can rest the thermometer on it. now it doesn’t roll around or get stuck to the table.

fastforward to the end of the brewday. the dubbel in the carboy and eric and i talking about how much we’d got and whether to dillute it a little. we got higher than expected boil-off, so there was lower volume at a higher gravity than expected. we added a half gallon of water to bring it up to 5gal at 1.067.

with the dubbel in the fermenter and the houblon boiling, it was finally time to sit down for a few minutes.

houblon boiling away.

houblon going into the fermenters.

me firing up the compressor. at the end of the brewday i use the compressor to blow out any water that’s left in our immersion chiller. works pretty well.

with the brewday done it was time to relax on the patio with a beer and some euchre!

a short while later chirs and kyoko arrived for dinner and an evening of sampling. here we see kyoko, aka “pregasaurus”, hiding behind her purse. that is a massive purse.

she came out of hiding, but with some sunglasses.

chirs, eric, kyoko, jan, and me. jenn taking some expert photos, which unfortunately means she’s not seen.

a couple of the beverages we sampled on the patio. flying dog wild dog colorado saison and victory v-saison.

me working the grill.

kyoko and jan.

eric doing the “very hairy jake gyllenhaal”

eric and kyoko.

jan and jenn.

jan rockin’ that shoelace headband.

eric and jenn after we moved things inside.

kyoko and jenn.

kyoko, jenn, eric, chris, and me.

biergotter represent, biotch!

the almighty skweek.

jenn and kyoko.

getting setup for more beer + euchre.

eric torturing the cats.

time for some beer!

here we were all enjoying the baird brewing co midnight oil export stout that chris and kyoko brought back from a recent trip to japan. it was some good stuff!

skweek being an attention hog.

jenn and kyoko.

i’ve been waiting for a while to do this one. partially because i knew it’d be exciting, and partially because i knew i’d need help to get through 4 bombers at over 10%. a four year vertical (2005-2008) of stone imperial russian stout.

jan was clearly excited about it.

everyone finishing off the baird’s and waiting to crack the first stone.

metal baby.

the 2005 was gone and we were on to the 2006…

the 2005 was pure heaven, definitely the best of the bunch.

beer makes you crazy!

stay tuned for the big monk’s elixer brewday in a couple of weeks.